


Heart-Shaped Box

by Hikari_no_Chibi



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Like Every Tropey Romance that starts with a STUPID Bet, M/M, Set in the 90s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-15 09:39:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17526305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikari_no_Chibi/pseuds/Hikari_no_Chibi
Summary: Los Angeles, 1994.  Kylo Ren and his pack of vain, mean friends pass the time by playing terrible "pranks" on those unfortunate enough to cross paths with them. Outside their miserable circle of psychopathy and mind games, the world moves on.  Crack and AIDs dominate the headlines.  Corrupt cops commit race crimes without reprisal. The people riot. Grunge and hip-hop infiltrate the charts.  The Internet is born. Cell phones can fit in your pocket.Rey is just trying to make it through her own trials and tribulations without watching as someone else she loves dies. Again.A Semi-Modern Reylo AU.





	1. Creep (Radiohead)

The tape picked up in a sleek, futuristic restaurant that Kylo instantly recognized as one of Snoke’s new outposts.  Maybe the one in Burbank? It looked like a lot of industry luncheons happening in the background – you could always tell from the gaggles of fat, balding men arguing over a stack of scripts, with the occasional zoned-out starlet slouched next to some greasy agent on a yellowing DPC brick.  Looking at the slick-backed man’s ancient phone, he’d never been more grateful for his TAC Elite VIP. The receiver flipped open, the antenna collapsed down, and the custom black casing made it almost fashionable to carry.  This model wouldn’t even hit the shelves for another 6 months, and Kylo’s assistant was already half in love with the vibrating ringer and built-in answering machine. Matt had never had it so good.

The video resolved its perspective, and Ren immediately understood.  Whatever casing unit the PA was using to hide the camcorder shifted, and he got a full view of the laughably down-market date that had joined Hux for lunch.  When was this taken? The date burned into the bottom of the TV said January 3, just this past Tuesday; it was a fresh one.  Maybe the courier had brought it to him first – which meant Hux was really proud of his display. Usually Ren didn’t get anything good until it had passed through Dopheld and Phas to Bazine.  Hux was such a crink.

Anticipation tingled in his chest.

The sound was karked, but Kylo turned it up anyway.  He could clearly see Hux pouring the last glass of champagne from a gold-foiled bottle before tipping the empty into the bucket of ice.  That was one of the spectacular ’88 or ’89 vintages, if he knew Hux.  And from the look of the girl, in her tube top and scrunchie, it had not been properly appreciated.

A few seconds later, one of the waiters dressed all in crimson (another of Snoke’s signatures on any line of business) presented the check, and that was when all hell broke loose. Hux raised one of his thin, pale hands as he spoke – and even though the dialogue got mostly swallowed in the white noise of the restaurant, it was pretty clear that he meant for them to split the bill. Kriffing hell.

She started off sweet, no doubt trying to soften Hux up (Ha! As if.)  Then things turned sour as the girl slammed her fist into the table, rose to her feet, and emptied her water glass over Hux’s stupid head.  But of course Hux wasn’t fazed.  He could be a right little psychopath when things didn’t go his way, but this was playing out almost beat-for-beat exactly as intended.

Kriff, now she was screaming at the waiter.  But this was one of Snoke’s joints, and he always said there was no such thing as a free lunch in Los Angeles. It was one of the many things Ren appreciated about the man who took him under his wing and whose lawyers liberated his Trust Fund from the vice-like grip its trustees.

Ren braced for the laser-brained bimbo to try and slap somebody, his own snickering drowned out by the blown-mic tirade of a high-pitched tantrum.  Lunch at an _Ut Prius_ outpost location would only run you a couple of hundred bucks, but that was before Hux went ahead and ordered the champagne. The cherry on top came when she tried to make a run for it, and the PA had clearly given up on subterfuge by that point, because the jerky motions of the camcorder followed her every move – from the chair she threw, to the double-feint, to the wide-armed maître d’ playing goalie by the door.  And Hux – kriffing Hux – was just about druking himself, he was laughing so hard.

It only got better when the police came to take her away.  Damn.  Kylo had heard from Dopheld what the latest challenge was, but he hadn’t expected Hux – of all people – to deliver.  Hux could make anyone cry with just a few words; it was almost a point of pride with him.  But he rarely scored when it came to playing the charming dinner date.

For a moment the tape cut out, a shockingly loud burst of static crackling through his sound system, and then Hux was standing front-and-center, smirking at the camera from the driver’s seat of his over-sized Finalizer Humvee.  In the whole of California, only Armitage Hux and Arnold Schwarzenegger owned one of those fully-loaded monstrosities.

“Wasn’t that a lovely little treat, Ren?” sneered Hux down the lens.  “And you’re getting first looks, too. Remember to pick me up a thank you gift the next time your crusty old butler gives you an inside line on a decent cellar auction.”

Kylo scoffed.  Thorpe had stopped forwarding him auction catalogs more than three years ago, when he’d very deliberately declined to send his mother the customary arrangement of birthday flowers.  Not that it mattered. Snoke made sure that they all had access to the best estate wines from the continent.  Napa was frankly over-hyped.

“Yes, yes, your champion returns,” Hux carried on in his usual, aggrandizing manner.  “Please hold your applause for the end.”

If the television had been in striking distance, Kylo might have put his fist through Armitage’s stupid face.  He’d defeated Ren by a scant 3 points, largely due to Phas unexpectedly giving him a round of perfect 10s toward the end.  But recordings, as a rule, did not slow down or stop just because the viewer was struggling with unwanted memories, which meant that Hux was still talking. 

“I hereby declare ’94 the year of the pass-it-on challenge. Videos are still rated out of 10, except the terms are to be dictated up front.  Once you complete your tasks to the best of your ability, pass the good bits on using this same tape and issue a new challenge.  Everybody has to go once before anybody goes again, and anybody who takes more than 3 weeks to respond automatically forfeits.”

He’d put thought into this.  Because of-kriffing-course he had.  Prick.

“Kylo Ren, I challenge you to touch an actual human breast – and Snoke agrees with me.  It’s like you’ve lost your focus lately.  Get some little piece through second or third base, and then let her know how utterly beneath you she is.  I’m prepared to put up 6 full points for a crink who loses her top where the camera can see and 2 extra points if she cries during. Plus 1 more if you steal her bra, plus 1 if you can prove she’s a gold digger on tape.  And that makes 10.  I’d say sorry in advance to the ladies in our audience, but I expect Phas will enjoy this one. Happy New Year, you sniveling cretin.”

With that, the tape ended and Kylo’s screen cut to silvery static.  Hux kriffing would drag Snoke into this.  And he wasn’t un-focused, he was in… in something adjacent, but unrelated, to grief.  It was stupid. He shouldn’t care about Han Solo – the old fool had never cared a bit for him.  Not enough to stay.  Snoke wanted them all to maintain a certain image, a certain mind-set.  A real leader took what they wanted, and they were all destined for great power. 

For Hux, the bloodthirsty mind games came as easy as breathing.  It was different for Ren. He didn’t hurt people who didn’t deserve it.  It was only when they failed his tests and showed their true colors that his dark side came out.  And at that point, catching it on film as further proof against the tide of human vanity was the least they deserved. 

He was no prize in the looks department, but obscene wealth and personal trainers covered a multitude of sins. A plastic surgeon could take care of the rest, or at least pin back his ears, but he’d seen too many collagen-filler horror stories among his mother’s friends to start augmenting himself before the age of 30.

That deadline may or may not have been closer than he wanted to admit.

Anybody interested in him was almost definitely in it for the money, and most of them were about as subtle as a sack of hammers about it.   He’d known that all his life, but Snoke taught him the finer points to look out for – the girls who wouldn’t ask outright for anything, but who were oh-so-sweet for the night after he took them shopping; the ones who practically tripped over themselves to fall on his dick, hoping to land an anchor pregnancy; the ones from his own social set, who played it cool and hard to get – only to keep three or four guys on the string at once, emotionless and hungry for social cachet.  Kylo Ren knew them all.

And Hux was right: the Gold Digger Grift was his favorite way to punish the rest of the world for exploiting him.

“Matt, rewind that!” he shouted at his gangly, blonde assistant.

The poor kid nearly tripped on his own legs as he leapt toward the VCR.  Matt O’Reilly definitely topped out Kylo’s list of blatant sycophants, but he was loyal. Loyalty counted for a lot with him. It made up for the dirty blonde hair that was neither short enough to look neat, nor long enough to be suave; it made up for the coke-bottle glasses, and the string-bean physique that hadn’t touched a bench press except to clean it.

But none of that mattered. Matt had passed the test. Matt felt honored to put up with his druk.  Matt didn’t talk to the tabloids, and Matt knew how he took his coffee, and Matt followed his orders to the letter, until Kylo himself cussed him out for being an idiot.  But most importantly, Matt didn’t ask a lot of stupid questions when Kylo told him to set up a camera and film him from inside a parked car in West Hollywood.

If he ever met a girl half as loyal and twice as pretty, he’d be set for life.

 

* * *

 

As expected, there were plenty of would-be actresses (AKA waitresses) going for a late-morning jog in the hills.  Half of them probably took the bus up from the valley, hoping to run into a Tom-Cruise-type.  Well, this was their lucky day.

The uniform was fairly standard: obnoxious, neon tracksuit bottoms topped off with bare-midriff sports bra. A few holdouts still wore the skin-tight spandex and dizzying leotards of the 80s, but they were all over 30 and therefor unemployable.  Some of the middle-aged ones had leg warmers on.  Leg warmers.  Bazine and Phas would be outraged if they saw that.

Kylo had posted up next to his black-on-black McLaren Silencer. Behind his favorite toy, one of his chauffeurs had parked half-decrepit Ford Falcon that his father left him.  Ren tried hard not to think too much about that.  He’d instructed Matt to set up a standard bait and switch with some hunk of junk, expecting a Fiero or a Yugo from whatever concierge service handled karked up requests like that.  He had not anticipated that he’d come face to face with a ghost.

The past was dead.  Snoke told him to kill it if he had to, but a hard, fast life of red meat and disappointment took care of it.  Nobody had expected it, least of all Kylo Ren. To him, Han Solo stood timeless and insurmountable – the sort of figure you revere at 8, but learn to loathe by 10.

The past was dead.  It died of a heart attack at 3 AM on November 5th, in some nowhere motel in Nevada. Thanks to the proximity to Canto Bight and the Strip, it wasn’t hard to concoct a list of sins that hastened the old man’s end.  None of them had anything to do with him.  It was just a car. A junker. It was perfect for the bait-and-switch, and whatever this feeling was that had thrown him off his game had nothing to do with that.

His mindset had been all wrong to initiate a conversation with the first few women who jogged past, and the fifth had some sort of Walkman on her head.  Six and seven were dressed like confetti vomit, but lucky number eight – she was kitted out in the full Nike uniform, made more tolerable by the darker colors of the brand.  She’d do.

“Excuse me, Miss?” said Kylo as she trotted through the intersection.  He was leaned elegantly against the Silencer, letting untold hours at the gym do what genetics alone denied him.

She looked up for a moment, a bit sourly, but sweetened on him when she took in the full effect.

“Yes?” she asked, jogging in place right under his nose.  There was a significant bounce in her chest, and the look on her face said she knew how to lead with her best assets.

“Sorry to bother you,” he demurred.  That was important.  You had to be polite to people, and then it was up to them whether or not they acted like animals.  “I’m new in the area, and I was wondering if you could tell me where I can find some decent restaurants around here? I was just trying to get some lunch.”

“Um…” she looked left and right, her blonde ponytail swishing a bit like a whip.  “I think there’s like a sushi bar down that way and to the left. But, like, most of the nice places are up on Rodeo or Sunset.”

“Oh…” Kylo gave her his best bedroom eyes.  “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in grabbing a bite with me? I don’t really know my way through LA traffic yet.”

“You mean like a date?” she twitted, dropping her jog and stepping closer into his space.  She flicked her ponytail twice.

“Is that alright?” asked Kylo.  “I don’t want you to get into trouble with your boyfriend…”

She just laughed and tossed her hair again.  “Hey, it’s like no big deal,” said the woman, placing a hand on his biceps.  “It’s just like lunch, right? Let’s do it! I wonder if the Chateau will like seat me in my work-out clothes, though?”

“I guess we could always run and grab you something different to wear,” Kylo offered.  One thing he had learned from his mother was that a good shopping trip could solve any crisis.  That was probably not what she would have wanted him to take away from their many, many talks during Han’s many, many absences – but it was the one leisure activity Liea Organa had to share with him.

She giggled.  Yeah, Hux was going to give up those 10 points. He was going to give them up hard.

Kylo wrapped his arm around her shoulder and led her two steps further down the sidewalk, tugging open the door of the Falcon.  “I hope you don’t mind, but the AC is out. I should be getting it fixed soon though.  It was my Dad’s car,” he adds, somehow unable to stop himself.

 “Like, what dude? No. As if. Are you insane? I thought that was your car,” she snipes, twisting out of his reach and pointing an accusatory (manicured, he notes) finger at the Silencer.  “I am so like not getting into this death trap.”

And just like that, the switch flipped.

“Obviously you’re not getting into that car, babe,” he crooned, stepping back into her space and running his palm down the small of her back.  “I was totally joking, just to see if you were, like, legit. I can’t believe the door actually opened.”

“Ohmigod, you like totally had me going.  Oh my god, they like didn’t even bother to lock the door!”

“Well it’s not like anybody would try to steal that heap of metal,” Kylo laughed.

“Oh my god, you are like so funny,” she giggled, snuggling right back up to him.  “So, should we, like, get going, or…”

“Oh, right!” he blushed, lost in his own thoughts again.  That damn Falcon.   He didn’t need any more distractions.

“I’m Kylo, by the way,” he said, by way of an introduction.

“Awesome name! I’m—“

But whatever she was called, he didn’t hear it. Because at exactly 11:32 on Saturday morning, his life was irrevocably changed by a sprinting ball of orange and white fur and the slender girl who hurdled into them as she tried to catch it.

“BB, no!” shouted the wrecking ball at precisely the same time Kylo’s gold digger started flipping out. “What the hell, you skank! You could have like killed us!”

“I am SO sorry about—“

“Talk to the hand, grunge queen—“

“I swear she just slipped her collar by accident—“

“You’ll be lucky if I don’t sue you! That kriffing dog like completely scuffed up my shoes—“

“Don’t kick my dog, you—“

“I do Tae Bo, bi—“

“Enough!” he roared, stepping in between them.

“I’m sorry,” panted the dog’s owner. She just barely wrestled the wiggly fluff-ball back into its collar, and they both looked like sprinters at the end of a race. “It was an accident.  BB just took off and got away from me.”

“As if! You’re like some kind of psycho mugger.  For all we know, you just picked our pockets. Kylo, baby, check and make sure she didn’t take anything.”

He eyed the situation warily, but there was a small enough kernel of plausibility in her histrionics to merit a quick look-see.  Kylo didn’t miss how his date nosed her way in, keen to get a glimpse of his billfold and credit cards.  It was all there, so he snapped it shut quickly.

“Are you okay?” Kylo asked the dog-girl.

“What the hell?” spat blondie. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“No.” She was a user and a cheater.  The dog had more right to his concern than she did.

The jogger made a noise somewhere between a squawk and a scream before turning her back and stalking away.

“Well, she seems to be moving okay,” said the other girl.  “I’ll take that as a good sign that she didn’t sprain anything.  Sorry about your girlfriend.”

“That was not my girlfriend.  Bad date.”

“Heh. I loved those movies. Especially Last Crusade,” she told him, tucking the mess of her falling buns behind her ears. “Well, sorry again about BB...”

Looking at the full picture, Kylo could definitely tell that she was part of the grunge scene.  She was wearing baggy, dirty pants that seemed like the lower part of a onesie.  The upper half hung limp at her hips, flapping in the breeze like the belted flannel shirt of a cheap catalog model.  She wore more than a sports bra, but not by much; it looked like a graying men’s under-shirt.  And the shoes… those boots were definitely not made for running.

He decided it didn’t matter.  She had great taste in action movies, and she was in good shape.  Something about this was working for him, and he was at least interested in getting through Hux’s set-up with this one.

“It’s not a big deal,” Kylo promised.  “Here, can I at least give you a ride back where you came from? You look worn out.”

The girl, whose breath was finally even, gave him an appraising look.

“That’s nice of you to offer, but we’d better not,” she decided. “This whole winter has been strange. BB’s coat is shedding like crazy and it’s still only January.”

“I can deal with some fur,” said Kylo, gesturing down to his pant leg. His signature black jeans had an obvious layer of orange and white on them.

“Well… It’s not too far, so…”

“So it’ll be a quick trip.”

She was backing away from him. Kriff, he was coming on too strong.  This girl was sharp, he’d give her that.

Blessedly, the waddly-orange dog-thing gave a mighty heave of its stubby legs, leaping from her arms and into open air.  Kylo caught it reflexively, and found himself with an arm load of licking, wiggling energy.

“BB!”

“I think she likes me,” he teased.  “What do you say? It’d be my pleasure, really.”

The girl sighed.  She had given him a quick once-over when they started talking, but this felt less curious and more clinical.  It was exactly the sort of look he gave Hux’s bodyguards when he felt an overwhelming urge to punch the ginger kark in the face.

“OK,” she said at last. “We’re just going about a mile into Fairfax.  Do you know the Irving Boys’ old place?”

“Do you mean the quick-change oil and lube?”

She nodded.  “Well, it’s still a garage, so close enough.  We try to get a bit of real work done instead of up-selling house wives on headlight fluid these days. I’m Rey, by the way.”

He got a real smile then, and a hand extended to shake. The freckles… the dimples… He was in real danger of admiring her face.

“Kylo,” said Kylo, before he gave too much away.  “So, does your boyfriend work at the garage, or…?”

“Ha! Try again,” Rey laughed, giving him a punch in the arm for his trouble.  She took back BB, who had finally ceased to squirm.

“Lady Mechanic: got it,” he said, running a hand through his hair.  Well, this was going to be interesting.  A real gear-head would have definitely appraised the Silencer the moment she arrived.  “So, shall we?”

And with an air of finality, Kylo ushered her back toward the rusted-out Falcon.  He opened her door and braced for the reaction.

“Is this really your car?” asked Rey.  Her voice sounded a little wobbly. 

“Is that a problem?” Kylo asked back.

“No, of course not.  It’s just… I was supposed to help restore one of these for a friend of mine, but it didn’t work out.  I’ve actually never seen one still in running condition; most of them have been gutted for parts or rusted out,” she explained, lowering herself into the passenger side. 

The Falcon was a lot of things, but compact was not one of them.  She and BB looked too small, almost child-like, on the broad bench of the co-pilot’s seat.

Rey ran a fond hand along the dashboard. “It’s wonderful.”

“It was…” Kylo cleared his throat.  “My dad left it to me.”

He hadn’t gone to the funeral.

Ren slammed the door – hard – and got his druk together before letting himself in on the other side. He hadn’t driven stick for a while, and the total lack of power steering was a real throw-back to joy riding at 13, but the engine purred to life without so much as a hiccough and everything else welled up from the deep cistern of muscle memory.

It took the radio, still tuned to the same rock station out of Redlands, playing Smells Like Teen Spirit to pull him back out of it.  Glancing at Rey, Kylo was shocked to see that they were both doing a karked job of pretending not to be sad.

“You know… if you ever want to tune the old girl up, I still have a few of the parts I sourced upfront for my friend.  I’d give you a deal on the labor.  Or, if you’re looking to sell—“

“No.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—“

“No, I’m not looking to sell,” he clarified, taking a wide right turn with what he very much suspected was a burned-out signal.  “Not no, I’m not interested in fixing her. Because I am. Interested! I am interested in yo—“

“Kylo, it’s okay,” said Rey, reaching a steady hand to pat his white knuckles on the wheel. “Take some time and think about it, I’m not going to give you the hard sell today.  But definitely do get your inspection up to date before you take this thing down the freeway.”

Now she was teasing, and that helped put him back at ease. He ought to have laughed, or said something witty.  Instead he asked: “Do you want to grab some lunch before I drop you off?”

“I can always eat!” Rey laughed, eliciting a quick bark from BB. 

Finally, they were back in familiar waters that Kylo could navigate.  “We can make a quick pit-stop at the mall and—“

“Oh please no,” groaned Rey. “Food Court food is terrible, and yet somehow Finn brought home Taco Bell twice a week. Plus, they’d never let me bring BB in there.”

“I mean… But shouldn’t you pick a new outfit?”

Rey was looking at him like he’d grown a second head.  Or maybe a third.  The long pause of bafflement was really dragging on.

“You must be from the Hills,” Rey decided, just as Kylo drove past the old Irving Boys’ garage.  “We are not buying new clothes for lunch.  That’s… No.  Just run up Santa Monica to Taxco.  They know BB there, and we can grab tacos to go.”

“Tacos. Right.”

 

* * *

 

 

So they got tacos.  Both orders together came to less than $12, and Rey paid for both while Kylo dug around in his wallet for any bill smaller than a $100.

“You really did not have to buy me lunch,” he repeated as the car rolled into the Irving Boys’ lot. “I was just trying to find a $20. I’m not broke.”

“I really did not have to tackle you on the sidewalk as I chased a mad corgi, either, but it happened.  All we can do now is accept it and move on.  You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thank you.” It was reflexive, more evidence of his mother’s influence. He probably hadn’t said those two words to another person once in the last 12 months.

Kylo parked the Falcon and they both hopped out.  BB did her best to run circles through their feet, but he’d grown wise to the little fur ball's wiles.

“Rose, we’re back!” yelled Rey.

A smallish figure on a crawler made a noise of assent, followed by the sound of metal grinding and soft-voiced cursing.

“The oil pan in the new Raddus is a real pain,” whispered Rey, as though it were a great secret of her industry.

“I’ll keep that in mind if I ever turn into a soccer mom,” he whispered back.

“I smell tacos,” said a small, Asian girl who’d managed to sneak up on them.

Rey pushed her tray forward. “The two on the left are yours.”

And it was… nice.  Low rent, dirty, and nowhere near as intimate as Kylo would have liked, but comforting.  He liked the smell of motor oil, he realized, and then immediately resented the feeling.  It had no place at the top of the food chain, which is where he belonged.  Snoke was always lecturing them on the proper order of society, and it was both self-evident and easy to believe when you were snorting coke off a silicone Barbie.   

“So… who’s your friend?” asked the other girl, shamelessly nudging his arm.

“Kylo, Rose. Rose, Kylo,” said Rey, taking a big bite of her lunch.  “BB found him.”

“Yikes,” said Rose.  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Kylo.  I’d shake hands, but my hands are greasy.”

“Not too greasy for tacos,” Rey joked.

“No such thing!”

The two girls chatted a bit, and Kylo took in more of the space.  It was a small place, with only two lift bays and limited parking out front.  It looked like they had a tiny office and reception, probably with a one-stall toilet behind a door that didn’t lock right.  This was not his world, but he recognized the signs of Rey and her co-workers all the same.  Someone had pinned a red ribbon to a donation box by the register.  Someone had hung up a puppy calendar in the same place of prominence his father would have given to bikini models. The stereo had a tape deck with a pile of cassettes that spanned from N.W.A. and Mariah to Weezer and Soundgarden.  Everything that didn’t belong under the hood was kept fairly organized and wiped clean.

None of that changed the fact that he was going to have to go out tomorrow and pick up some other horror on heels to fulfill his challenge from Hux.  Kylo glanced through the bay door, and spied Matt hunched unconvincingly low in the driver side of his lime-green Geo.  Kriff, the camera was still rolling!

This was the part where a lesser monster might have felt some kind of shame. But Kylo Ren was not of the lower order of men.  Nobody was that perfect. It wasn’t possible.  Somewhere inside Rey, there was a terrible person waiting to come out and shake his hand.

He was going to meet that person, do what he needed to do, and get it out of his system.  And if, in the meantime, he got to spend time with a pretty girl whose smile out-shone the sun, well… there were worse ways to go down burning.

TBC… 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw this hilarious(ly awful) video of guys trying to humiliate women (gold diggers) on YouTube. And I thought to myself, that is the stupidest fucking.. What kind of asshole would even DO THAT? And then, obviously, the answer was Kylo Ren. He would do that, for the same sort of fucked up reasons that classist kids in Ivy League societies burn hundred dollar bills in front of homeless people.
> 
> I concocted the idea of the video challenge (and Matt the Radar Tech as Ren's P.A.) to give some structure and motivation beyond pure narcissism, but it's a narrow margin. And then, having the bet/bargain romances of the 1990s rattling around in my head, I decided to make it a 90s fic as well. Also inspired by: Leonardo DiCaprio and the Pussy Posse (google it).
> 
> Kylo's POV narrative dominates chapter one, which leaves Rey's insights and complexity lacking. I hope to carry on this story with chapters from both sides, so hopefully that will balance the narrative if anyone cares to read more.


	2. Cannonball (The Breeders)

 

The honk of an alarm clock at 4 AM was nobody’s idea of a good time, least of all Rey’s. But she’d acclimated to early mornings growing up (the afternoons being entirely too hot for the kind of work Unkar Plutt required of his scrappers), and the LA traffic had cemented the necessity of beating rush hour into her rhythm.  It was fine. She hadn’t dreamed.

She crawled down, over the foot of her bed, and two steps brought her through the kitchen of the salvaged air stream that she called home. Lot fees in the north hills weren’t cheap, but they felt minuscule compared to the rent being charged in the city.  And anyway, Finn flat-out refused to help her move into the little place she found out in South-Central; it wasn’t like she could stay parked at Poe’s beach house for the rest of her life, though, and this was their compromise.

Rey bent down and tugged open her mini-fridge.  Blessedly, it was still cold. Despite all the parts she’d replaced through the years, the old Frigidaire stubbornly remained.  More than once, Rey considered ripping the old thing out and leaving it in the middle of the desert. When times were good, it was easy to get carried away thinking that you could afford to upgrade every bit of kit along the way.  When times were lean, Rey was singularly grateful for the $1800 she kept tucked in the back of the freezer, placed there the day she left the flea market empty-handed and decided that she wouldn’t really miss solid ice cream. Survival beat sweetness every day of the week.

She pulled out a tub of yogurt, gave it a sniff, and unceremoniously dumped in what remained of her box of cornflakes. A splash of water from the tap to rinse off her spoon completed the ritual, and Rey began shoveling it in.  Breakfast wouldn’t have been breakfast without caf, and she happily stirred two spoonfuls of instant into a cup of tepid tap water to add an extra zip to her morning. It tasted like concentrated sin, but it got the blood flowing.  She chugged it, the same way she did every day, then ran her fingers around the empty yogurt tub to get the last, gloppy drop.

A few more steps brought her into the bathroom, and Rey knew she’d regret leaving her clothes strewn over the sofa when she got home tonight. But right now, all she wanted was to pee.  A shower would have been nice, too, but it wasted water and drenched her floors; instead, she showered in the back office at work. It wasn’t so much a bathroom as a sanitation closet that had undergone significant renovations when Chewie left her with the keys.

With her teeth brushed and her hair up, Rey threw on some sniff-clean clothes, grabbed her leathers, and picked up her helmet from its place of prominence atop the microwave.  You’d have to be pretty hard-up to rob an air stream in the middle of a trailer park, but Rey double locked the door behind her anyway. She gave her truck a friendly pat on the flank, leaving it parked for another day, and slung a leg over her bike. The old Bonneville Speeder probably broke every noise ordinance in the San Fernando Valley, but it was hers: the first thing she’d ever owned, repaired and replaced for the better part of a decade, until not even the original frame remained. 

She didn’t ride so much as fly, losing the roar of the engine in the roar of the wind, until finally it all blurred together into something transcendental and vast.  All she had to do was feel and breathe. Just breathe. Her commute took her the long way through the canyons and cut through the hills, catching the golden sunrise cutting through the mist and smog just as the rest of the city was starting to pile up on the I-5.  

She made it almost to the Sunset Strip before she spied her first Bazine billboard of the day -- splashed all over the city in skin-tight latex, laid out on the hood of a pink corvette. It seemed like another damn billboard went up every week. 

Rey’s errands never took long: muffins in, parcels out, grab a shower before suiting up, and check for keys in the drop box.  Opening up the garage happened almost on auto-pilot at this point, and she made it all the way through setting the caf pot before the phone rang.

“Irving Boys’ Classic Custom, this is Rey speaking.”

“Well aren’t we professional this morning,” a familiar voice teased.

“Shut up, Poe,” Rey blushed.  “What’s going on, do you need me to take BB again?”

“Nah. Finn’s home with her today, and then later he’s going to bring her to the set before we break.  It’s about the other thing.”

Damn. She’d hoped against hope that he’d forget.  Or that Rose would change her mind. Or that his agent would find literally anyone else to stand around and hold Poe’s drinks all night.

“I don’t know, Poe, it’s not really my scene…” Rey hedged.

“Only because you don’t want it to be. You’re gorgeous, and we both know you can handle the paparazzi,” he reminded her.

Rey winced.  It turns out you were not supposed to roundhouse kick creepy men taking photos from the bushes if you were out and about in LA. It was a great way to accidentally impress your best friend’s secret celebrity boyfriend, though.

“Besides, it’s not about the red carpet for me this year. It’s about the message.  Amilyn’s a stone-cold beast, but even she’s telling me to take this seriously. I can’t just go out there and wear the red ribbon with some County Fair Queen who fell off the bus last week.  And I don’t want to do it with someone who doesn’t know me.”

“But Rose--”

“I did ask her, you know,” Poe admitted.  “She isn’t ready, and I didn’t push.”

“No, you’re just pushing me,” Rey said a little bitterly.  But it didn’t matter. Obviously she was going to do it, however unpleasant it may be.  

“This is so stupid,” she huffed. “You should be able to take your actual boyfriend as your date.”

“Heh, yeah,” Poe chuckled humorlessly.  “Not in this decade.”

He wasn’t wrong.  As the charming male lead, Poe Dameron was barely getting away with the light-brown complexion of a Yavin boy playing as tan while he seduced leggy blondes at the beach. Adding gay to that resume would have been career suicide.  And although Poe’s work typically consisted of family romps and rom-coms, he’d been gathering Oscar buzz for his supporting role in the latest Mace Windu biopic.

He wasn’t going to win. Rey didn’t follow the industry talk in town, as a rule, but you’d have to be living under a rock (and not spending all your free time with an actor’s entourage) to see how it was going to go for him.   _ Schindler’s List _ had the major accolades in the bag, though Rey knew that Poe was personally rooting for  _ Philadelphia _ .  Hollywood didn’t get a lot right, but there was a hint of  something that might become change on the wind.

“Peanut, please,” said Finn from somewhere over Poe’s shoulder.  They probably hadn’t even risen from bed yet, which meant Poe had either over-slept his call time or planned to break the land-speed record on his way up to Burbank.  Neither would surprise her at this point. “We don’t have anyone else. Paige is gone. People need to--”

“Don’t,” Rey sighed, softer and quieter than before.  “I’ll go. I’m sorry for being such a drama queen, I just hate everything about this whole fucked up situation--”

From the sound of joyful laughter and giggling on the other line, Rey could tell that Finn and Poe weren’t really listening.

“You’re the best, Peanut!” cheered Finn.

“You really are. Thank you, Rey,” Poe said.  “I’ll let Amilyn know how it’s going to be. It’s on the 22nd… are you free tomorrow to go up to Rodeo and get the whole dress-shoes-handbag thing out of the way? I’ll have her make you an appointment for Versace.  It won’t matter that it’s off the rack, just make sure you pick something that’s charcoal or navy with a bit of texture. They’ll know what it’s for; the sales girls can help. My suit’s going to pair an Hermes orange tie with a--”

“Poe. Poe! Poe, buddy, Rey is at work,” Finn interrupted.

“But--”

“She doesn’t care, babe.”

Rey couldn’t help but smile.  

“I really don’t need the details,” she confessed.  “But have Amilyn set it up for the 8th, and have one of her people call me here this afternoon with the details.  I’ll mark off the 21st and the 22nd on my calendar; I assume this is going to involve an insane amount of waxing and scrubbing?”

“That was one time!” gasped Finn.

It was one time too many, is what it was. She hadn’t known that she needed special appointments for hair, nails, and makeup to go to a party with Finn and Poe; Amilyn sorted it, but Rey had protested loudly when someone decided to wax her pubes in the back of a conversion van. Amilyn said to chalk it up to a misunderstanding; apparently, what she’d misunderstood was Rey’s interest in banging the first guy who’d have her at an industry event - IE, none.  She didn’t write, and she couldn’t act.

“I’ll let Amilyn know to book the works,” Poe snickered.  Then, more sincerely: “You really are a life-saver, Rey.”

“Whatever,” she teased. “You’re just lucky I love my niece.”  And she did. For all the trouble that damn corgi caused, BB was the reason she’d even met Finn and Poe in the first place.  

They hung up, and Rey felt a smile tugging at her lips.  It was good to have friends. Good, and nerve-wracking. Nobody had ever relied on her for anything but labor, and she’d never been in a position to rely on anyone for much either.  It was funny how life could change so much between 19 and 21. Well, it was 22 now. Or it would be soon. Rey didn’t know when her birthday was, so the Nevada Division of Child and Protective Services had simply put January 1st. She couldn’t even begin to guess at how that decision-making process worked, but it’s what her license said, so she guessed she was stuck being a New Year baby.

They’d celebrated on the beach, in front of Poe’s house -- a cozy little party, on a private spit of sand.  Just a bonfire, the ocean, and what passed for stars. She didn’t often think fondly of Niima, that little junk yard south of Reno, or of the Jakku conservation area and its broad, sandy playas.  It had little to recommend it, but the stars… yeah. Maybe she’d swing through on her next parts-picking trip. Not to see Plutt, and certainly not to give him her business. But maybe she could just drive her old Gladiator into the playa and sleep in the truck bed, just to take it all in without the crippling fear that she’d starve hanging over her head.  

At 7:30, Rey unlocked the doors, rolled up the security grilles, and started scrubbing a fresh batch of spark plugs.  Transitioning the business from a lemon-lot quickie lube into a vintage and classic specialty shop was going slow, but steady. She’d taken on a handful of big-ticket repairs through good old fashioned nepotism, and word of mouth had finally spread. She hadn’t been confident enough to invest her own money into a project yet, not sure what kind of success she’d find in the local market, but with any luck it was on the horizon.  Baby steps. Start with the spark plug, build up to the fuel injectors.

Rey didn’t have any great passion for meticulously scrubbing old gear shafts, but parts were parts;  whether you had a cult classic or a luxury import, mail-order formed a bigger component of her business model than she expected.  That was good. It was mobile: the kind of work that endures when it all goes to shit and you’re alone again. 

Home hobbyists doing their own restorations paid big money for authenticity; bigger than even Unkar Plutt knew.  He’d seen a junkyard full of salvage, practical and valuable in scrap poundage and chop shops. Rey saw possibilities.  A retired architect in Chicago was not going to drive through the junkyards of the southwest in 100 degree weather just to pick the bones of an abandoned Aston Martin.  Rey would. Nothing really rusted in the desert, and plenty of high rollers had gone bust or abandoned ship in a 500 mile radius around Canto Bight in the last 50 years.

So no, she did not enjoy taking an old toothbrush to a distributor cap at 8 o’clock in the morning.  But it was reliable work. Practical. Safe. The sort of drudgery she’d known all her life, and in telling a junk rat from Jakku that she now had the means to do more, the world had also told her that she finally had something to lose.  And, of course, that traitor voice that lived at the bottom of every soul reminded her almost daily that it was familiar work, too. The sort of work she was good at, and had been raised for. 

Rey was so wrapped up in her own shit that she didn’t hear Leslie come in until the older woman’s tool box clunked heavily on the worktop beside her.  Les was a tall, stockily built black woman who’d been working for the Irving Boys when Han and Chewie bought them out. She was the only employee the Irvings had who was worth a damn, and she knew it. Les wasn’t here to make friends; she was here to make money.  Rey gave her as many inspections, oil changes, and alignments as she could fit into a day, and trusted her instincts. With Rose back at CalTech part time, they probably needed to hire someone else to do the same -- but by the sour look on Leslie’s face, that was going to be a conversation for a different day.

“Some hunk of junk is blocking my bay door,” Les growled.  “I have half a mind to--”

“I’ll deal with it,” Rey promised.  Whoever it was hadn’t come into the main office, so maybe they’d simply mistaken their tiny lot for free parking.  It happened a lot, and Rey wasn’t shy of calling up a tow truck.

“It’s too damn early for this bullshit,” griped Les.

“Caf's in the pot, muffins are in the back,” replied Rey. “Blueberry.”

Leslie gave her an even, assessing look.  “It better be.”

Rey put down her half-finished parts, and although it was infinitely harder, with a few deep breaths she managed to put down some of her anxiety.  She made her way through the heavy machinery and into the car bays, pressing the button to open both of them up to the bright light of day.

Sure enough, someone had parked in front of the far bay.  For a pleasant change of pace, it seemed that the perpetrator was still in the driver’s seat.

“Kylo?”

His eyes snapped up, over the wheel, staring intensely.  When he didn’t move to get out, Rey jogged over to see what was up.  For some reason, she felt very much as though their roles were reversed; he looked like the one caught in the proverbial headlights. 

“Did you decide to have the old girl freshened up?” she asked, running a fond finger along the Falcon’s flared fender.

“...yes,” he said, after too long of a pause. 

Then he opened the door and unfolded his legs.  Damn, but he was tall. Broad, too. She didn’t usually make any special efforts with her appearance (and certainly not when she was going to be rolling around on a creeper all day), but she knew her cheeks had gone pink, and she felt unspeakably grateful that her hair was clean and relatively neat in 3 little buns.  

Whatever the feeling was, Rey snapped out of it.  It had been his dad’s car, and Kylo looked somewhere between ready for a fight and in dire need of a hug.  Not a fresh loss, then, but an all-too-fresh reminder. She felt the same way every time she picked up an old tool that used to belong to Han.

“How are you doing?” Rey asked seriously. “It’s kind of a big step to--”

“It’s just a car,” he said impatiently. “You said you could fix it.”

Oh. Well, alright then. All business it is. 

“I can do an inspection today for $60,” explained Rey.  “She probably won’t pass as-is, but it will give us a road map of what needs to happen to keep the old girl driving.  The minimum road worthiness fixes will come in around $1000, accounting for the parts I already have and what I know about these old Correllian models. Unless--”

“Unless--”  They spoke in unison. 

“Unless we find something unusual,” Rey finished.  “What I’m expecting to see is maybe a little dry rot, worn out brakes, and some loose electrical connections.  New tires and an oil filter go without saying. It looks like your dad kept her in pretty great shape, all things considered.  Now, if you wanted to restore her to factory condition--”

“Is that possible?” Kylo asked.  For the first time since he stepped out of the car, he actually looked like he was listening.

“I can show you my portfolio and give you my references, but the short answer is yes.  I can also help you with some aftermarket modifications if that’s what you want, but you don’t look like the hot rod type.  A restoration on that magnitude starts with a flat retainer of $10,000, though.”

“It’s--”

“Let’s do the inspection and take it from there,” Rey interrupted.  “Once we get a feel for the old girl, you can sleep on it and decide what you want to do.”

“I assume by we, you mean you,” he panned, though Rey could see the hint of a smirk trying not to form.

“I mean we,” she laughed, glad for the slight lightening of his mood.  “Only if you want to; it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But when we’re talking about work over $300 or $400, and particularly about classics like this lady, I like to walk my clients through everything.  It helps to let you see what I see.”

“Your clients must have a lot of free time,” he says, but this time he’s smiling fully.

“Most are retired,” Rey agrees.  “Or they’re super tall college boys home for winter break.”

That earns her a laugh.  

“I graduated in ‘89,” Kylo explains. “Just so you know, I’m not some unemployed nerf herder.  But you’re basically right about the free time. My schedule is karked, but my job affords me a lot of possibilities.” Now he’s looking at her like he expects something, and Rey is categorically ill-equipped to guess what it is.

“I really like being self-employed too,” Rey agrees, for lack of anything better to say.  In fairness, setting her own hours was all she knew; but Poe always seemed enamored with the idea that she could close up the shop and sleep all day if she wanted to.  “But yeah, it is hard explaining why you’ve sometimes got to work 20 hours on a Saturday. So, why don’t you pull into the first bay and pop the hood? We’ll--”

“Come out with me. Today. Come out with me today.”

Wait, what? He was giving her that look again.  Maz once told her that you saw the same eyes in different people over time, but Rey recognized these from her bathroom mirror at home.  Those were the eyes of someone lost. The strong arms and broad chest didn’t hurt his odds, either, although she’d noticed yesterday that he was uncommonly pale for a California boy.  Maybe he was a transplant, like her. Everybody was from somewhere else, these days. And anyway, there was only one way to find out.

Kylo shuffled nervously. Damn, she should have said something already..

“I’ve got a lunch break at 1?” she offered.

“Really?” he gaped.

“Yes, really,” Rey laughed. “If you don’t want tacos again, we could go to the farmer’s market.”

“Go anywhere you damn please!” shouted Les from inside the garage.  “Just get that heap out of the way so I can do my job.”

Now it was Rey’s turn to blush.  They moved the Falcon silently, in a language forged from glances and nudges.  

“So.. this is awkward now, and I’m not sure why.” She never knew who was supposed to talk first.  Poe always made fun of her for it. This time, she just got it over with.

“It’s, uh… I didn’t expect you to say yes,” Kylo told her.

“Why not? We went out yesterday, and it was lovely.”

“That… I… I mean, I rolled up here in a broken down Falcon,  ripped jeans, and a kriffing Madonna t-shirt,” Kylo huffed.  

“I like Madonna.”

He bolted from the car as soon as it was parked, and long legs brought him to Rey’s door with unexpected speed.  Kylo was the kind of guy who opened the door for you, even though they’d only gone about 15 feet. He seemed intense and nervous, but sweet.

“You didn’t even ask me what I do for a living,” he muttered when the car door shut again.

“Did you want to talk about your job?” It hadn’t looked like a comfortable topic when he’d barely hinted at having a lot of free time, but Rey did not consider herself a great student of the human psyche.  She just liked her own space, and tried to pass the favor along.

Whatever response Kylo might have made was lost when an actual Ferrari pulled into her parking lot.  You saw a lot of luxury cars in LA, but she’d never seen a black-on-chrome piece of sex on wheels like that before. And holy fuck, was it an original Spyder? Maybe not, but it was definitely an early model. Of course, it could also buy you a big house in the suburbs. 

“That’s a fine piece of engineering,” purred Les.  And if Les was impressed, then no -- she wasn’t going crazy.

“Do you want to see what he wants?” Rey asked her typically cantankerous coworker.

It earned her a rare grin.  “Come to mamma…”

“You don’t want to go check that thing out?” asked Kylo, looking as lost as ever.  “It’s a 1960 California Spyder. They only made about 50.”

“I’m surprised you knew that,” said Rey, a little impressed. “Now I know your secret.”

He looked like he was going to be ill.

“I meant that you’re secretly a gear head,” Rey clarified, which seemed to calm him down.  “And that car is amazing, but the Falcon is an American classic. Assuming that guy’s not lost, Les will shout if she needs me.”

She popped the Falcon’s hood.

“So this all looks original at a glance, but we’ll check--”

But Kylo wasn’t listening. He was just flipping slack jawed between her and the Ferrari.  Oh. OH!

“We can go look at it if you want to,” she offered.  “Come on, maybe they’ll even let us--”

But whether the driver would or would not let them check out the engine quickly evaporated as a possibility.  Now Rey was just worried whether or not Les would or would not put a wrench through his windshield. 

“I don’t have time for this!” she was shouting.  “I haven’t even had my muffin yet, and it is too damn early for this Hollywood bullsh--”

Rey tagged in, and Les backed off.

“Did you say something inappropriate to my employee?” she asked the thin-faced, blond man in the driver’s seat.

“I told her to send me the hot chick,” smirked the driver. “Thanks for coming over, bay-bee.” And that was just the way he said it, too: bay-bee, not baby.  Like every syllable was a Herculean effort.

“Sir, I think you’d better leave,” she said.

“Oh, come on, bay-bee,” he continued, laying it on thicker than a bricklayer.  “I was just interested in asking you out for a date and then for sex. That’s not your boyfriend is it? If you dump him, you can come with me.” 

He was pointing at Kylo, and Rey felt herself flush.

“No, that is not my boyfriend,” she seethed.

“So there is not any problem, then? Come on, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.  You want to go to the Strip? You want to go to 90210? I bet you’d look hot in Gucci. I’m driving a Ferrari, so you obviously know I can afford it.”

“No thanks,” said Rey as she tried not to cringe.

“But I’m super successful and rich,” the kid said.  He was squinting at her like he needed glasses. “I’m driving a nice car, and I have an eight-pack.”

“Are… are you alright?” she asked him.

He was just sitting there, staring off into the distance at something behind her.

“No, in all seriousness, are you on something? You seem a little disoriented, and I’m not sure you should be driving. Do you want me to call somebody?” Rey repeated, bending down to eye level and grabbing the driver’s chin.  His pupils weren’t blown out, which was a good sign, but he felt warm and sweaty. 

“Ha, ha, ha!” said Kylo, stepping in between her and the car.  “Good joke, Matt. What a prankster.”

“Do you know this guy?” Rey asked him.

“Yes! Yes, I know him.  He’s, uh, just trying to embarrass me…” stammered Kylo.  “I asked him to pick you up. Pick me up! Pick me up after I dropped off the Falcon. I should have expected a stunt like this… Matt! Apologize for insulting Rey.”

“Um… sorry?” said the blond kid. “It was, um… just a joke?”

“A bad one,” said Rey.

“Oh, well, Matt…” tried Kylo.  “Matt’s just a laugh a minute when he’s not being a nerf herder.”

That was as blatant a lie as ever had been told, but Rey could not for the life of her guess why.  Was Kylo embarrassed of his friend, or of himself? She made Matt apologize twice to Leslie, and decided to let the rest of it go. Something was definitely going on, and she frankly didn’t have time for any of it.

“So did you want me to take you home now, or…” Matt asked Kylo.

“No! No, we’re not done here. Just… go away.  I’ll call you if I need you, I--” He turned and stole a glance at Rey, then bent down and whispered something in his friend’s ear.  

She’d had just about enough of bad theater for one day.  Still, she owed him a chance to explain himself. It wasn’t his fault if his friends were weird, although it probably did say more about Kylo’s character than she wanted to admit to herself.  The Spyder sped off, and for the first time since she’d plowed into him, Kylo looked small.

“I’m.. sorry,” he said again.  “I don’t… Kriff, I didn’t know it would go like that.”

Rey held his gaze far longer than was comfortable.  He squirmed a bit.

“My friend Finn once introduced himself as a ‘Big Deal’ to my boss,” she told him.  “He wasn’t, of course. And what’s worse, everyone obviously knew it. I think he was trying to be charming and then he panicked.”

“Um… Okay…”

“I just meant,” she clarified, “that you’re not the only one whose friends have done something ridiculous for absolutely no reason.  You’re not alone. But is there something that you need to tell me? Because that was weird, Kylo. That was really fucking weird.”

“That was my Ferrari,” he blurted out at once.  “It was my Ferrari, and Matt just borrowed it to do… whatever that was.  But you were cool, and into the Falcon, and I didn’t want to make a big thing about it when I saw him pull up.”

“Are you embarrassed because you have money, or because you think I don’t? No, don’t answer that.  It’s fine. You do realize you offered to take me shopping before tacos yesterday?” Rey joked, giving him a light punch in the shoulder to loosen him up. “It’s pretty obvious you’re used to a different lifestyle than me. Most people are, if we’re being honest.”

“So… you’ve known this whole kriffing time,” he surmised, face suddenly dark.  It was like night and day, the difference between that sweet and unsure guy who got the door for her and this glowering behemoth with his fists clenched.

“I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a secret," Rey soothed.  "Look, I can tell this is a big pain point for you. I’ve got my fair share of hang-ups, so I do understand if you’d rather not talk about it.”

He stares at her. Hard.  Yikes.

“If you’re still interested in working on the Falcon or going out for lunch, great.  If not, no hard feelings, alright?” Rey extends him a hand to shake.

He takes a moment to think about it, leaving her hanging.  

“Why didn’t you get in the car with Matt?” he asks at last.

“You mean apart from the fact that he insulted Les and basically treated me like a prostitute?”

Kylo winced, and Rey stifled a laugh.  

“A Ferrari’s like a 2-ton toddler with a death wish.  It can go faster than you’d ever think possible, and frankly it’s kind of amazing to see one come alive.  But they’re all just looking for an excuse to fall down and throw a tantrum. Besides,” she smirked, “I like dark-haired men.”

Kylo gulped.

 

* * *

 

 

They ended up documenting his car with a clipboard and her old Polaroid, then decided to head to Du-Par’s for an early bite. Rey didn’t usually keep an extra helmet in her saddlebags, but she did have a spare in her locker in case Rose ever needed a ride, and she grabbed it when she went back to shrug off her jumpsuit.  Kylo seemed incredibly uncertain about climbing on behind her, and Rey was shocked to learn that he’d never ridden before.

“How is it even possible that a guy who owns a Ferrari hasn’t been on a bike?” she teased.

“I’ve been on a bike,” he pouted.  “Just not a gas-powered one.”

“Would you rather go somewhere we can walk?” Rey offered for about the fifth time.

“It’s fine,” he groaned, giving her the first genuine response in an hour.  It hadn’t taken her long to realize that Kylo liked to retreat into his own thoughts, much as she did.  The difference was, he stayed there -- giving somewhat rote and hesitant responses while she talked him through the job.

“I’ll go slow,” Rey lied.  “Hold on tight, and don’t lean too much.  They key is just to breathe.”

“Yeah,” Kylo whispered, wrapping himself around her.

When she felt his chest rise and fall twice, she punched it.

 

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Making a Bazine / Angelyne joke was the highlight of my day, despite their very different aesthetics. Poor Rey, dealing with a super awkward Matt and an immediately-regretting-this Kylo! He is definitely not done testing her, and she is definitely not shy of confronting him. 
> 
> I hope this fic works out. I wanted Rey to have a support network (this is already douche-fic; it doesn't need to be isolating and desperate abuse fic too). She has friends, a job, a life... but shes still somewhat transient. She's ready for the carpet to be pulled out from under her feet at any minute. I hope that rings true for your experiences with the character as well.
> 
> And special call-out to Leslie Jones, from the Matt the Radar Tech skit. I have no idea what her Star Wars name would be, so I just kept it simple. Logistically, the shop needed at least 3 employees. Probably 4. Rey will have to hire someone as soon as I figure that out.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read and commented on the last chapter! Next time, we should see a little of their date an the ensuing meltdown from Kylo's perspective.


	3. Cherub Rock (Smashing Pumpkins)

 

 

“Quit smiling so much, Ren. What are you, queer?” sneered Hux, yanking the heavily embroidered jacket from the shop assistant’s hands.

Kylo scowled at him. “Why, Hux? Interested?”

Armitage gave a disdainful sniff, then slammed his dressing room door shut again.  

After touring the main displays, Hux and Phas had settled in to try on every scrap of silk and leather the employees could carry. Years of experience spending Saturday mornings this way told Ren that Armitage wouldn’t buy anything, and that Phasma would buy anything that added to her look of white gold and chrome. Too bad for the plebes working on commission that Bazine was out of town.  She was a Versace slut, and the store always made a killing.

Strictly speaking, none of them needed to try anything on - even the dressing suite was unnecessary. The store had his measurements, along with the measurements of anyone else of consequence, and if it didn’t fit they could simply throw it out. Hux just liked to keep a captive audience while he preened, the crink.

Ren had not been smiling.  He’d just been considering out his options for Rey.  

There was something more to her.  She could be special. She was a natural, but a nobody -- like his father.  She would devastate the conversation at a dinner party, in the best way possible.  Ren needed answers. There was a script -- a certain way most people reacted to a common stimulus -- and Rey either hadn’t read it or had thrown it out.  He needed to know why, and that meant he needed to keep creating opportunities to observe her.

“Bring me that atrocious blouse in paisley,” instructed Phasma from behind her door.  

“And the clumpy jacket in chartreuse,” added Hux.  Several men scurried away to find whatever she was looking for. It was her third change in five minutes.  At that rate, they might actually get out of there some time this decade.

Kriffing Hux. He was taking forever.

Armitage and Phasma wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d said one mean thing about every scrap of fabric housed inside the iconic white colonnade.  Assistants brought Ren all sorts of small temptations while he waited on them, usually cufflinks. One enterprising girl even showed him a flotilla of barely-there cocktail dresses in case he wanted to treat one of his girlfriends to something pretty. The joke was on her: his girlfriend would never have to wear anything off the rack.

Of course, Rey managed to pull off a jumpsuit stained with motor oil.  She’d probably look good in a potato sack.

He was not smiling.  But he did wonder whether or not she’d wear her hair down for him tonight.

He’d decided last night, sitting alone in Mitaka’s living room while the rest of the guests did lines on the balcony, that this thing with Rey had to keep going. It was becoming an obsession for him, and not one he was inclined to share with anybody.  Of course, there was still the matter of Hux’s tape...

To that end, their date needed to go well tonight. Something soft, without being too formal or too romantic.  A quiet restaurant -- Italian, he decided. He wanted a place with artful music and candle light, but not so lavish that she felt obligated to spend the night.  Perhaps something that overlooked the ocean.

OK, maybe he was smiling.  

It was the silence that distracted him first. That atmosphere had been full of bustling, whispering attendants, and then all of a sudden it was not.

Only two beleaguered workers remained; the rest had left him lazing on a pair of sofas, fumbling with his PDA. Kylo didn’t even have any interesting meetings today; just a reminder for his date with Rey, programmed when he wanted to show off a bit by whipping it out over the lunch that she hadn’t let him pay for.  But that was fine. In the end, they both agreed up front that all the arrangements and the bills would be left to him tonight.

“I’ll be back,” he told Phasma and Hux through their doors.  Neither responded.

From the top of the stairs, he had a birds-eye-view of the scene unfolding.  Gianni Kriffing Versace, in the flesh, flanked by his assistant, the manager, and about half a dozen worker bees.  Two racks of clothes in garment bags had been rolled in alongside him, and there he was -- graying hair, body shifting toward fat, kissing a casually dressed woman on both cheeks.

Kylo’s heart skipped a beat.

It was Rey.  Rey, with her three little buns and a little black dress thrown on top of her jeans, looking very much like she was unhappy to be here. Mother of kark.

That was the same Rey who inhaled her patty melt and extra fries in about 2 minutes flat. The same Rey who made him stand in line for cookies to bring her grumpy mechanic, and not even the low fat kind.  The Rey who’d pulled her motorcycle over just to try on a lime-green fanny pack being hawked on the side of the street. That lying little sithspit.

Kylo grabbed the nearest employee and yanked him into an alcove.  “That woman down there, who is she?”

“Sir!” the little man protested, trying to tug his arm out of Kylo’s hand. It didn’t matter. Kylo was bigger and stronger by far.

“Who is she?”

“Sir -- I’ll call for security!”

But he was beyond listening. Kylo dragged him further away from the stairs and shoved him into a rack of shirts.

“You tell me who she is right kriffing now,” Kylo seethed.  “You know who I am. You know I can take what I want. Don’t make me ask you again.”

“If… hypothetically, if I were to tell you…”

Kylo’s fist slammed into the wall.

“Then, I’d say, hypothetically, that she might have been sent for a dress.  By a friend of Mr. Versace. I’d say… hypothetically… that maybe he decided to unveil a couple pieces of the Spring collection early, as a surprise for her, um… patron.  If that’s who she was, she’d be a very lucky young lady,” the man sniveled. “Mr. Ren, please. You know we have to be discreet.”

“You get into her fitting room, and when they’re done, you come back up here and tell me everything -- kriffing everything -- that happens.  Do you understand me?”

“Um--”

“Do it!”

“But Mr. Hux--”

“Fuck Hux,” Kylo snapped.  He tore some sort of pea-green nightmare out of the man’s hands, and balled it into his fists.  “Go.”

He went.

 

* * *

 

Hux and Phasma abandoned him to his temper long before his spy came back. It felt like he waited forever, giving orders by phone to Mitaka and Matt, then pacing like a caged rathtar.  He needed a background check on Rey. Rey What? He didn’t even kriffing know her last name, but Dopheld was up on all that new computer druk, and knew more than a few private eyes they could trust.

For Matt’s part, all he had to do was get them onto a VIP list.  

Kylo knew a thing or two about destruction.  Reputations. Careers. Her. He ruined what would probably amount to thousands of dollars in merchandise the moment he was left alone, but he didn’t care.  They’d bill him and he’d pay it, or they’d be smart and call it the cost of staying in favor.

“S-sir?” He was back, and his thick Italian accent belied his nerves.

Kylo pounced on the boy, and dragged him into the room by his lapels. “Talk.”

“She’s nobody, sir,” he whined.  “I wasn’t allowed in the room while she was being dressed, but from what I could hear they mostly chatted about the clothes and her friend who was paying for it all.”

“Who?” growled Kylo.

“I don’t know, some actor.  Someone who Mr. Versace knows.  Please, sir, I don’t know who -- Mr. Versace always called him his darling or his dear.  She is going with him to one of the awards shows…”

“Which. One.”

“I don’t know! It was all done in a hurry, strictly off the rack from the spring line.  Nothing couture, so it must be coming up--”

“Kriff!” Kylo exploded, shoving the useless man away from him.

So that was it, then? It wasn’t that he’d found someone who didn’t want anything obvious from him in this bubbling tar pit, it was just that she simply didn’t want him. Why would she? Apparently she was living every girl’s dream with some other man.

Kylo tore his hands through his hair, trying to think. She had been nice to him. Professional. They were in a business relationship, they went on business lunches.  She never outright said that she didn’t have a boyfriend, only that her boyfriend wasn’t a mechanic. Maybe it wasn’t that serious, and her friend was too stupid to know a good thing when he saw it.  Ren wouldn’t have guessed that she had a celebrity lover funding her lifestyle, which spoke to a modicum of discretion and loyalty on her part.

It was almost a relief, and the solution was obvious. He simply needed to demonstrate her indiscretion in a loud, public way to drive off his competition.  With fewer options, Rey would turn to him.

“Tell me about the clothes,” he spat at the clerk.  “Which dresses did she buy?”

“Not dresses, just one.  Sleeveless. Full length, in deep blue with golden pins holding up the front.  I’ve never seen a gown like that before; it came out of Mr. Versace’s garment rack.  She chose a clutch, and Mr. Versace sent someone to Gucci for the shoes.”

“And nothing else? It was all for the event, and nothing just for her?” He did not have time to suffer fools.

“She, ah… she had asked one of the shoppers when Mr. Versace stepped away if we had anything on sale.  I think Maria thought it was a joke.”

“Is the girl still here?” Kylo couldn’t stand to look at her right now, but he needed to know.

“They were still completing the paperwork…”

“Then you go, and you tell her this: tell her to pick out anything she wants, and it will be taken care of. Let her believe it’s her actor friend, let her believe it’s Gianni Versace himself -- I don’t care.  Give her whatever she wants, and bill it to my account. But remember,” he glared. “I want a full report on every move she makes between now and when she walks out that door.”

The shop assistant couldn’t get out of there fast enough, not that Kylo blamed him.  If he was lucky, there would be a hefty commission in it for him.

Kylo pulled out his sleek, black Elite and called Matt back -- he was going to need photographers at the club tonight. If Rey's secret lover insisted on discretion, then the fastest, simplest way to divide them would be to have Rey photographed outside a notorious drug den looking harried and hammered.  A general push through the tabloids in the First Order silo informing them that this would run on the front page would seal the deal.  Then it wouldn't be so easy for her to run to her rich lover; he wouldn't be so keen, whoever he was, to be photographed next to a woman whose name was dragged in the mud.

Ren would flush her secrets out. He was giving her no quarter, and then they’d see what kind of person she really was when her wealthy lover abandoned her for a very big, very public mistake. All his soft, sweet plans were shattered. She’d destroyed them. As long as Ren remembered that, the guilt would fade.

Mitaka called him back about fifteen minutes before the clerk returned.

“What did you find out?” barked Ren.

“Not enough,” said Dopheld.  “Most of the records aren’t digital, but I placed some calls to our friends in administration.  It looks like the business license for Irving Boys’ Classic Custom is listed under the name of Rey Plutt, but she signed Rey Doe on some other documents.  She owns her business, but rents the space… we should be able to get more on that. The phone book shows her address is somewhere out near Northridge. I think it’s a trailer park.  Before that, she was living in Malibu.”

“Carbon Beach? The Colony?”

“No, Escondido.” Dopheld pronounced it like the third-rate bargain beach that it was.  “It’s a secondary residence, but they took the usual steps to avoid listing the owner’s name.  Probably a celebrity retreat.”

“The only other permanent occupant for that address is a guy called Finn Freeman, whose last tax return said he was a live-in maintenance man or something,” he continued.  “Freeman had some kind of military career in the Gulf. He claims veteran status on some of his forms, but it seems like his discharge was sudden and unexpected -- neither Honorable or Dishonorable.”

“And before she shacked up in Malibu?” Ren asked, preternaturally calm.

“That wasn’t in any of the records I found.  Obviously she comes from somewhere, and we will find out, but it wasn’t any place in the tri-county area.  Her truck used to have plates from Nevada, so we’ll start there. Does that help?”

It kriffing did not. “Other family?”

“No other Doe in the phone book, but lots in the obituaries.  It’s the name they use for unidentified corpses. I found a few Plutts with first names that sound vaguely European, so our investigator is going to look into mob connections.”

“You’ve done well, Mitaka. Thanks for looking out.”  Looking back, if he had to pick a moment when Dopheld started to doubt him, this would be it.  They had known each other for years now, and Kylo had never said thank you.

“Um, Kylo…” stammered Mitaka.  “You know, Hux called too. He said something about this girl getting to you…”

Kylo hung up on him.  God. Damn. Hux. Well, that was it then.  Ren was going to have to get this tape with Rey sooner rather than later, or else Hux would know why.  And if Hux was curious about his behavior today, then that meant it was only a matter of time before Snoke had questions too.  Kriff!

He needed more time to think this through.  He was supposed to have two and a half weeks left to decide what to do.  Ren was just on the cusp of looking for something to take the edge off when his unwilling spy came back again, looking very much like a kicked dog.

Rey hadn’t bought much for herself, just a sweater-dress that had, in fact, been on sale.  Apparently things like that did happen if you asked the shop girls where to look. Kylo wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than the shopping spree he’d envisioned.  The cowering attendant said she had agonized over it, and almost didn’t buy anything when he wouldn’t let her pay for half. He even had the gall to ask Ren if he wanted to purchase anything else for himself.

No, he kriffing would not.

 

* * *

 

Kylo Ren smoked a bowl before he picked Rey up.  Just enough to get him through dinner without putting his fist through a wall.  She was… Hm. The frustration was starting to trickle back into his buzz.

Ren took her to an Italian bistro by the beach, where they sat outside. At night. In January.  Her jacket didn’t come off, but she didn’t complain. And when he ordered pasta for them instead of what would certainly have been excellent seafood, she seemed content with that as well.  He didn’t even ask for beer or wine, and apparently that didn’t bother her.

She was difficult.  Her affability was ruining this for him.  She didn’t seem to mind that he’d talked for half an hour about medieval swords, which was a secret passion that only came out when he was stoned.  She didn't seem all that bothered that their drinking water came from the tap and not from a bottle of Evian.  She didn't mind filling his silences with funny anecdotes about the kinds of things people kept in their glove compartment.  They laughed at stupid jokes and actually ate the bread sticks. She told him about the time she tried to make spaghetti and almost burned down a friend’s kitchen.

She wore her kriffing hair down for him.

Over coffee, Rey finally asked him if everything was alright.

“Yes,” he answered.

Her small, rough hand reached over the table to grasp his own.  Her fingers were cold. They’d been outside too long.

“Are you sure? Because you’ve seemed a little far away all night…” Coming out of someone else’s mouth, the words might have sounded whiney or accusatory. From Rey, they just sounded true.

“Not that I haven’t had a great time!” she added.  “It’s been a lot of fun, just…”

“Sorry,” said Ren.  He didn’t say that word often either.  “It’s just been a long day. I had a nasty surprise at… at work.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Not: what do you do? Not: where do you work? Just concern, totally at odds with what he knew to be true. It was enough to make his head spin.

“Not really,” he said at last.  “Do you like talking about cars all the time?  I mean, we’ve been talking shop a lot, and it’s been fun.  But it must get repetitive for you.”

“Sorry,” Rey said, not quite meeting his eyes.  “I do that when I’m nervous. Actually, I do have some fun non-mechanical news! Today, I--”

The waiter chose that moment to deliver their check.

“I’ve got it,” said Ren.  Because he did. Where Rey was concerned, he was about to have it all.

It looked like she was waiting for him to say something after the waiter took his card away, but when he didn’t she changed the topic. “Did you want to call it a night after this, or…”

“No.” No, he most certainly did not.  The hadn’t even gotten to the good part.  Then, from a font of kindness that he’d long thought dry: “Not unless you want to.”

“I’m… open to carrying on,” she decided, turning pink out to the tips of her ears and nose.  “As long as all my shop talk didn’t put you off.”

It hadn’t, of course.  Kriff, why had he even said anything? He’d just meant to make a point that talking about work wasn’t relaxing.  Plus, her enthusiasm reminded him of his childhood a little too much for comfort. But he couldn’t kriffing tell her that, could he?

The valet pulled up with the Silencer just on time, and Rey did coo over it a bit -- enough to be satisfying.  He got the door for her, out of habit. She wasn’t supposed to be getting nice Kylo Ren tonight, but it was hard to stay mad with her when she smiled at him all night.

“So, where to next?” asked Rey when she finally got her seat belt on.

“The Viper Room,” he said with just a hint of melodrama.

“Isn’t that the place where that guy died?” she asked after a pause.  She was starting to second-guess herself. Advantage: Ren.

“That’s the one.”  River Phoenix. He died on Halloween, at a party Ren had attended. It had been on the news and in the tabloids for a month.  They were about to have that in common, he supposed.

Rey’s eyebrows furled, which he promptly ignored as they pulled out into traffic. “Kylo, are you sure everything is al--”

“Yes,” said Ren. Nothing good could come from letting her finish that thought.

“Right.” She crossed her arms and hugged herself.  “Well… Let’s go?”

He punched it.

Ren had it on good authority that both Johnny Cash and Tom Petty would be playing sets in the coming weeks, but it was only local talent and Seattle garage bands tonight.  Totally missable, but the place was packed all the same. He chucked his keys to the valet and made a beeline for the downstairs VIP space.

“Don’t you want to dance?” asked Rey, struggling to keep up with him through the throngs in the club.

“No.” He did not. The downstairs wasn't for dancing anyway.

Ren was on the list -- Matt made sure of that -- and they were quickly admitted into the lightless cellar where no cameras were allowed.  It was still early in the night, not quite 10, but the place was packed. He could already see the owners and their friends partying hard at a corner table.  If Rey felt any shock at seeing pills lined up among the rows and rows of shots, she didn’t let on. She just grabbed his hand and tried to stay close.

“Is this your usual haunt?” she asked.

The music was loud and the room was crowded; Kylo pretended not to hear her as they continued toward his table.

“Hey, Peanut! Rey!” shouted a booth over by the bar.  A black man was waving his arm over his head, flagging them down.  Half a dozen bottle blondes were in the booth with him, but seated just to his right was a familiar face.  Wasn’t that Poe Dameron?

Kriff, that was just what he needed: another reminder of the past, and of his mother’s spreading influence. The so-called activist elites. What a joke.

That voice was too loud to ignore, though, and Rey immediately tightened her grip and froze.  Ren missed his cue and carried on without her, only to find himself anchored in place. They lurched, and then collided somewhere in the middle of their accidental Newton’s Cradle. Rey was in his arms. It felt… it felt.  Full stop. Better than it should.

“Hey, listen,” she said as she tugged him down to eye level.  Her eyes were green. Kylo knew that, academically, hazel landed somewhere between brown and mossy, but knowing it and experiencing it were two different things.

“I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything, but that guy waving over there is basically my brother,” Rey explained. “I know you didn’t exactly sign up to be grilled by my family tonight, but I should really go over there and introduce you. Do you mind?”

He probably would have said yes to just about anything when she cupped his cheek, and that pissed him off too. Even with all his rage, he was weak.

“We can go over,” Kylo agreed.

Rey nodded, relieved.  Then she took him gently by the hand and led him into the lion’s den.

“Hi, Peanut!” cheered her very drunk friend.

“Hi, Finn!” she replied.  “Finn, Poe, this is Kylo Ren. He’s the one I told you about -- from that day BB got loose.  Kylo, this is my brother Finn Freeman and our friend Poe Dam--”

“You told your friends about me?” He felt exposed.

“Of course she did… Kylo,” said Poe.  “But I didn’t realize Rey was talking about you.”

Dameron recognized him immediately, of course. Leia probably still had the same, goofy photo of him in her office, and Dameron had headlined her last two romantic comedies.  Blessedly, he didn’t say anything -- but that smug look… It said that he was granting a personal courtesy for Rey’s sake, not for his.

“So, Kylo, what do you do?” asked one of the blonde women, leaning forward to assess him.  Her big, fake tits didn’t even wobble as she moved.

“Oh, come on ladies, let’s cut poor Kylo a break,” Poe said pointedly.  He was here to save the day and twist the knife, apparently. “Why don’t you girls go get some drinks at the bar while Finn and I catch up with Rey?”

They left, and Rey gave him a plaintive look.  Ren nodded, and they slid into the booth next to her friends.  In for a penny…

Dameron looked about ready to come at Kylo with both blasters firing, but the black one -- Finn -- beat him to it.  They wanted to know if Rey had a nice time, if Kylo was taking care of her. They wanted to know if she needed a ride home tonight.  It took Kylo longer than he wanted to admit to connect the dots. Rey’s friend Finn… a mysterious celebrity and a man named Finn Freeman.  It was them. They were here. He was so totally karked.

Then Rey slid off her jacket, and Kylo had to add painfully aroused to his list of problems. He really, really should not have smoked before coming out.

“Rey, that’s fab,” purred Dameron.  

“Yeah, thanks Poe!” she grinned. “That was really generous of you, you know?”

Dameron was obviously confused, but playing it cool.  Luckily, Rey turned to Kylo and explained herself. When she didn’t stop explaining, Ren was afraid he might vomit.

Dameron sent her to a dress fitting today.  Dameron owned the dog that she jokingly called her niece.  Dameron was sitting there, soaking it all in, taking Rey’s thanks for a gift he hadn’t paid for.  And Dameron was the first to compliment the skin-tight, semi-sheer, cable-knit wet dream that hugged her curves just right.  He hoped he never heard the name Poe Dameron again.

“You’d look beautiful in anything,” said Kylo, trying to gain some measure of control in the situation. He hated charming, fast-talking playboys like Poe Dameron and Han Solo.  “But the dress is nice.”

“Thanks,” Rey whispered. “I, um… picked it out especially for tonight.  It’s not too much?”

“It’s perfect,” he said, because it was.  “How did you like your trip to Versace?”

“That’s actually what I was trying to tell you over dinner,” Rey giggled with her warm palm patting Kylo’s arm.  “It was so surreal, but also kind of like being the elephant in a circus.”

“Well tell us, Peanut! Don’t keep us waiting," said Finn, butting back into their conversation.

“There wasn’t a problem with the fitting, was there?” asked Poe.  “I knew I should have had Amilyn go with you…”

“Oh, I was fine on my own, Poe.  But you will not believe who I met there.  Well, obviously I didn’t know who he was, but it turned out that he was really sweet! Your friend Gianni came up from San Francisco to help me, as a special thank you to his darling, dearest Poe-Bear.” She said that last bit with all the teasing candor of a kindergartner.

This was really, really not the way tonight was supposed to go. Kriffing hell, you only had to be around Dameron and his glorified pool boy to see what was going on.  Sure, the gaggle of Beverly Hills bombshells gave them a whiff of respectability, but as soon as the girls left and the two of them felt at ease with Rey, all their druk came out.  Only his mother would cast a homo as a romantic lead. Because of kriffing course she would.

When someone finally came around to offer bottle service, Ren ordered vodka.  Lots of vodka. Rey just wanted a Coors.

“No,” cried Poe. “Veto.  Rey, you cannot drink that piss water all night. Absolutely not.”

“I like Coors,” said Rey, a little defensively.

“But Peanut, wouldn’t you rather try a cocktail or some whisky? They have a really great whisky selection--”

“No,” she said sharply.  “I don’t like hard liquor, it just dehydrates you.”

“Come on,” needled Poe. “Just try one cosmopolitan--”

“She said no,” Ren snapped.  Then he reached up to the server’s tray and grabbed Rey’s beer, slamming the bottle on the table so hard that it fizzed up like a volcano.

Rey scooted a little closer to him in the booth, and Kylo draped his arm over her shoulder, tucking her against him. Take that, Dameron.

Finn and Poe just laughed it off, losing focus on him and Rey as their flock of drug-store distractions filtered back to the table one by one.  

But Rey didn’t ignore his outburst.  She pressed up against him and whispered deliciously into his ear.

“Thanks.” Her breath tickled his ear and sent tingles over his neck.

“It’s not a problem,” Ren said stiffly.  “Order whatever you want.”

“Hey, there was one other thing I needed to talk to you about,” Rey continued, her lips devastatingly close to his jawline.  

Kylo nodded and tried not to tremble.

“So you might have heard Poe mention that we're going to an awards show together? I just wanted to make sure you knew that I was going as a favor. There’s never been anything between us, and there won’t ever be. Poe used to take our friend Paige to this industry stuff with him, but she’s… gone.  Anyway, I said I’d do it. Is that okay?”

“Are you asking my permission?”

“I… Sort of? I like you, but I feel like I need to support my friend.”

Yeah, he was definitely going to vomit.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” he said.

Kylo hurtled toward the stalls, flinging open the door and ejecting some hanger-on with a needle in his hand and a tourniquet on his arm.  It felt like his heart was going to explode. It felt like the walls were closing in on him.

He whipped out his phone and slid out the antenna, hoping against hope that he’d get a signal in the Viper Room’s VIP bunker.

Matt’s voice barely came through on the other line. “Hell-- Ylo?”

“Call it off,” Ren begged.  “Tell the tabloids they aren’t to run anything, tell the photographers that nobody is paying.”

“--Ylo, is th-- you? It’s-- Rey -- Oo late.”

“It’s not too fucking late!” he shouted, slamming his open palm three times in rapid succession against the stall door.  “You call them off, or so help me--”

“Kylo, can you hear me now?” asked Matt. “Kylo? Mr. Ren?”

“O’Reilly, you’d better get your kriffing--”

“I can’t hear you, Mr. Ren. I’m going to hang up now.”  He hung up. The bug-eyed crink actually hung up on him.  

Ren didn’t know what to do. He could look for a pay phone -- he could go out to the street and get a better signal.  If he did that, and the paparazzi were already waiting, he wouldn’t be able to get back in without causing a fuss.

Kylo walked unseeing out of the stalls, guilt and shame gnawing a hole into his guts.  He’d been prepared to send every camera in the city after Rey, and for what? To ferret out her secret boyfriend, to separate them, and to make her focus on him.  He was karked. If he did that, not only would Dameron not care that his beard had caught some bad press, but it might actually drive them closer together.  He'd been envisioning a reticent, older lover -- an affair, maybe; nothing had prepared him for this.   Even at his absolute worst, when Han Solo was dragged through the tabloids and investigated by the Attorney General’s office, he’d never purposefully allowed those jackals to touch his mother.

He sagged against the wall, letting the steady pounding of the drums and the stench of sweat wash over him.

“Mr. Ren?” asked a small man wearing a Viper Room t-shirt and an apron. “Mr. Ren, we have a phone call for you at the bar.”

Of course the bar had a phone. It was obvious.  He would have thought of that eventually.

He’d never been more relieved in his life to hear Matt’s voice on the other line.

“Did you call them off?” he snapped.

“I tried,” Matt told him.  “I wasn’t really sure that was what you were asking, but.. Well, Rey seems really nice, so--”

“You don’t kriffing worry about Rey,” snarled Kylo. “Rey is mine.  I will take care of her, you got that?”

Matt gulped audibly.  “I made sure everyone knows not to run the story, and I called a couple of the big guys to get the word out.  You know I can’t guarantee that nobody will approach you.  It's too late to tell them all.”

“I will deal with the photographers at the club.  You keep the publishers in line.” He could do this. They could stay here and party all night, and Ren could make sure they left through a side door instead of out the front like he’d planned.  This place was built to keep embarrassing photos of high-profile patrons from going public; he just had to make sure Rey never found out how close he came to crossing that line.

And Snoke… Kriff. Snoke could never know about this.  He wouldn’t understand why Kylo called it off. He wouldn’t understand that Rey was good. And Kylo knew, as he looked back across the room and spotted her smiling at him from Dameron’s table, that he was in deep druk.

If Rey knew the truth, she’d run away screaming.  Ren already knew he had no intentions of letting her escape.

 

TBC…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren has a dangerous temper that's going to get him into trouble.


	4. Hunger Strike (Temple of the Dog)

Once upon a time, Han flippantly told her that these old Falcons were just as likely to come from a war zone as they were to end up in one.  Rey didn’t understand him at the time; a GED didn’t particularly prepare you for a conversation about war-time steel production and the military-industrial complex.  She knew now, though.

The first Ford Falcon rolled off the line in 1947.  It was built to appeal to the atomic generation, from steel forged for the shipyards, destined for the Pacific Theater.  They sold almost exclusively to returning GIs who weren’t quite ready to settle down, and sometimes to older-generation mobsters who still had the Prohibition mindset about trunk space.  When they stopped making them a few, short years later in ‘51, more than half the stock ended up being scrapped and sold back as salvage -- this time headed to Korea.

A lot of them were probably still in Korea, considering the massive number of landmines left behind.

It seemed somehow important to understand everything he’d been trying to tell her that night, not that all those hours at the public library helped much.  Han never had a chance to say anything more on the subject, and Rey was left to wonder if she’d missed some vital piece of the metaphor. And in the end, it wasn’t an answer to the one thing she really needed to know from him: why her?

With a little time and a lot of distance, Rey could almost understand what had motivated him and Chewie to bring her on board.  It made sense to Rey, as a career scavenger, why a man whose flatbed broke down south of Niima would be in the market for any mechanic with a winch and a tow truck.  It made sense that happenstance and bad luck led the truly desperate to Unkar Plutt.

It made sense when Han said he was also looking to repair his old drag-racer all the way back in Washington.  It made sense to think that he might take a chance on a resourceful, scrawny kid who knew her way around a boneyard. That wasn’t such a terrible leap of faith, given those parameters.  She’d found that carburetor for him. And the crankshaft. And the sump. She’d fixed his flatbed too, in the end, so that he and Chewie could make it on time to a racetrack in Reno.

All of that made sense; Rey pulled her weight, and they were short-handed with just the two of them and the temporary guys who rotated so often even Rey didn’t try to remember their names were worse than useless. College kids, mostly, who thought that apprenticing on a pit crew would be a lot like running away to join the circus. They probably still talked about it at dinner parties.

She could never make sense of why he’d take her out for pancakes after each race, though.  Or why sometimes he let her drive the track, even though Chewie was technically their reserve. Or how Chewie taught her to struggle through at just about every bar game ever made, from checkers and darts to pool and cards -- but sometimes Han would still throw a game to let her win.  The three of them ran old dirt tracks and sniffed out local drag races on their never-ending-quest for something Rey still couldn’t articulate. They’d get all the way up to Takodana, in northern Oregon, and then Han would remember some auction all the way out in New Mexico, and they’d be headed south again.

To her shame, Rey hadn’t realized he was doing it on purpose.  There was just something about that Falcon, Chewie told her, and crossing the Washington state line would have meant it was time to stop waiting for Ben.  It was the first and only time they had ever talked about Han’s son. He wasn’t at the wake, which Rey had learned was different from a funeral, and she didn’t have the guts to bring it up again.

Chandrila was where Han’s ghosts went -- and Rey understood all about that. Han did want to fix up that old car, Rey was sure; it was like an obsession with him.  He just didn’t want to do fix it up with her.

There was no reason -- none at all -- why ripping apart the engine of Kylo Ren’s Frankenstein monster should make her emotional.  That was silly. Han wasn’t her father; she wasn’t his daughter; this wasn’t even his car. But it had been someone’s car, and they’d loved it.  A factory restoration would have been a disservice to the memories crammed into every corner of it.

Rey made her repairs and left the rest exactly as she found it, right down to the miniature space ship wedged in the ashtray. Kylo’s father must have loved him very much, to share this with him.  Unkar didn’t even let Rey touch the keys to the fridge, not even to clean out the mildew.

The Ford Falcon had the rounded fenders and extended hood of a bygone era, with an early taste of the fins and ridges that went on to define the 50s.  She was a thing of beauty, but of pain and struggle too: bullet holes in the wheel wells; pull-tab beer cans wedged under the seats; a marked-up road atlas in the glove box; a false bottom in the trunk; a photo of Kylo with big ears and a ‘70s blowout stashed in the visor; a hidden nitrous tank behind the dash, with the PSI jacked so high it was lucky the whole engine didn’t explode...

That last one was troubling.  They sold kits for that sort of thing these days, but a system of this age and specificity could only have come from the hodgepodge experiments of a true flyboy.  Rey had to call Chewie and ask his advice; he and Lando were the only two people she could think of who might actually know a thing or two about maintaining those old NOS lines.  They got through it -- Rey wearing a gas mask in her work bay, Chewie drinking a beer out by the payphone at Maz’s place. He’d offered to sell her the building again. Rey didn’t know if she was ready.

Her stomach rumbled.  She should have had more than a blob of peanut butter on cocoa puffs for breakfast this morning.

Rey took a breath to clear her head.  Inventory. She was taking inventory of the work to be done.  Someone had upgraded the radio, even going so far as to add an 8-track player, but all of the wires hung out at the bottom like confetti.  There were small tears on the thick leather of the passenger seat. And most importantly, that Ford Falcon logo that was supposed to be inset at the center of the steering wheel was missing.

Well, there was only one place where Rey might get fiddly bits and pieces like that on a Monday morning, and standing around dabbing at her eyes wouldn’t make it go faster.

“Rose, are you going to be okay alone for a couple of hours if I head down to Venice Beach for a swap meet?” she called over her shoulder.  

Technically speaking, and despite Rose’s superior education, she was still only an apprentice.  She wasn’t supposed to work unsupervised for another few months yet, after she passed her ASE. You needed two years of supervised work or a two-year course at a vocational college and a year of scutt-work to operate on cars in most places.  After that, you had to pass a long list of tests to become certified in enough areas to make a living at it. That had been Rey’s problem back in Niima, because of course Unkar Plutt was never going to help her get certified when he, himself, had been operating illegally for the better part of 3 decades.

A few, short years later, Rey had passed every damn certification test that they offered.

Rey Plutt was nothing like her namesake.  Plutt wasn't even her real name.  When Rose needed a job with flexible hours to help take care of Paige, Rey took her on without question. She paid her fairly, and she made sure Rose knew all her options to pursue a career if she wanted.

“I just have a couple more oil changes on the books,” Rose answered from her place by the computer.  Her efforts had been totally indispensable at getting both Rey and the garage up to speed with the modern era. They were on the Internet.

“So that’s a yes?”

Bright as she was, Rose had never needed much in the way of supervision; she liked technology, and she learned fast. In a few more months, Rose would be allowed to take her test if she wanted.  A trade was a trade, even when the rest of your plans fell apart.

Rose laughed.  “Yes, Rey, I’ll be fine.  Have fun on the boardwalk!”

Rey’s stomach gave another conspiratorial gurgle as she loaded a few boxes of parts into the Falcon’s spacious trunk.  “Will-do, Rose.”

She tossed a granola bar into the Falcon, changed into her street clothes, and hit the road.  There was classic rock on the radio, an aggressive engine under the hood, and the idling horror show of L.A. traffic; she was home.

 

 

* * *

 

This early in the day, the temperature by the shore still hadn’t hit 70. Rey snuggled into her oversize flannel, and just let herself enjoy the whiff of brine on the breeze.  When you hated the cold but loved the sea, you did not want to end up living next to the Pacific. It was so cold for most of the year that the surfers needed wet suits. In her ignorance, Rey used to think that all oceans were warm and blue.  She very nearly got hypothermia the first time she saw it, and she’d ruined a perfectly good pair of steel-toed boots.

Rey spotted the conclave of classic cars and less fortunate enthusiasts parked on the far side of the green, opposite the canals.  Subtlety was not the Falcon’s forte, and more than a few heads looked up as she pulled into a vacant spot.

“Hot damn,” said a man who looked to be pushing 60.  “For a second there, I thought I saw a ghost. Where did you dig that old girl up, Rey?”

“I’m working on it for a client,” she said.  Rey gave the man a firm, familiar handshake. “How’s it going, Garven?”

“Oh, you  know -- same old, same old.” He patted the hood of his classic TIE Roadster.  “Still looking for some replacement gaskets, if you’re dealing.”

Rey raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t want to order custom? Old gaskets leak, even factory sealed ones -- assuming I could even find one.”

“Did you find one?” he asked pointedly.

“I dunno, Garven… there’s a fine line between authenticity and stupidity,” she cautioned.

He looked back at the Falcon. “You’re one to talk.  Does Chewie know you have that?”

“We were just talking about it on Sunday, not that it’s any of your business.”

He looked surprised.  “Well, that’s… huh.”

“I have a couple of head gaskets and a valve cover from the ‘58 models that should fit. They didn’t change the engine block from ‘56 or ‘57,” said Rey, pushing forward. “They’re refurbished, but in good condition overall.”

“What are you looking for?” he asked, and Rey knew she had the upper hand for once.  They were starting to draw a crowd, so Rey went through her paces and unloaded some of the spare parts in her trunk while they negotiated.  She had to rebuild the dash console, and she needed the wheel emblem. For her own sanity, she had to have it.

Plenty of the swappers collected hood ornaments and dash icons as the sort of small, portable trophies that appeal to motor heads and gear junkies.  Somebody had something, or knew who did. An hour and a half later, she had most of her wish list and a lead on a yard up in Bakersfield where she hoped to get the rest of it.  All it cost was the gaskets, a Rolls Royce cigarette lighter, and some conversation.

Most of the guys were headed out to lunch next, the swap meet accounting for a social event as much as a practical way to source parts. A couple of them usually offered to take Rey along, either out of loyalty to Han or a warped view of her sexual prowess. Rey always declined.  This wasn’t the same as Han taking her out for pancakes. She’d been naive enough to think like that, at first, but it only took Snap Wexley’s hand on her thigh to make her realize that things could never be the same. Half of these guys attended his funeral, and at least a third of them drew the conclusion that he’d stepped out on his wife for a younger model.

Rey’s stomach revolted, both from hunger and from dread.  She just prayed that Leia hadn’t seen her that way -- a younger woman at her estranged husband’s funeral, who’d discovered him in his hotel room when he died.  She couldn’t let herself think that way. If Leia resented her, she hadn’t acted like it. And anyway, there had never been a whiff of anything vaguely sexual from either Chewie or Han.  If there had been, she might have been with him during the heart attack. She might have called for an ambulance in time.

Rey couldn’t bring herself to get back in the Falcon yet.  Every time she touched the car, all her failings came back to roost.

She decided to walk the boards instead, at least until she cleared her head.  Some moron had parked a lime green Geo practically on the beach, and Rey paused when she caught a glimpse of Kylo’s friend in the driver’s seat.

“Matt?” And was that a camcorder on his dashboard?

“Nothing!” he started, jumping in his seat hard enough to crack his head against the roof and rock the boxy little car on its shocks. “I mean, I’m not doing anything. Everything’s -- What are you doing here?”

Rey bent down and looked through the open window, meeting him on eye level.  His pulse looked like it was going a mile a minute, and his Adam's apple noticeably bobbed as he gaped like a fish.  She pushed her hand through the window and rested her palm on his forehead. He was sweaty, but not too hot.

“Are you alright?” she asked more kindly than she felt. “We don’t need to have another talk about driving high, do we?”

“I’m fine,” he squeaked.  

“You don’t seem fine,” observed Rey.  “You’re parked in a crosswalk.”

“I… I’m…”  He gestured to the camcorder and then snatched the thing away with a yelp, hiding it in an obvious lump under his shirt.

“Are you making a movie?” she said, taking mercy on him.  The guy was a jerk, and maybe an addict, but he was Kylo’s friend. Plus, they’d been talking for close to a minute, and he hadn't propositioned her yet. That was a new record.

Matt nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“That’s nice,” said Rey.  “What’s it about?”

“I -- Kylo!”

“Kylo?” Incredulity coated every syllable.

“Rey?”

Rey twisted away from Matt to look toward the direction of the voice, and there was Kylo Ren: strolling down the boardwalk with his arm draped around a pretty, blonde girl in a skin-tight jogging outfit.

“Um, hi…” said Rey, trying not to sound too disappointed. Life was all about managing your expectations.

Kylo practically spring-boarded away from the poor girl, and spanned the distance to Rey in a few, wide strides.  He reached toward her. “Listen, Rey, it’s not what you th--”

“What the hell, Kylo!” she snapped, swatting his hand away and shoving past him. The poor girl he was with nearly crashed into an oncoming rollerblader.  The skater swerved and kept moving, but the blonde girl fell hard on her knees.

“Did you seriously just push her?”

“I--”

Rey did not care, she was already heading toward the other woman.  “Are you okay?” she asked, ignoring the sulking giant behind her.

“I’m fine,” she said in a small voice.  “I lost my balance.”

“If he pushed you--”

“He didn’t,” she insisted.  “At least, I don’t think…”

“She’s fine,” Kylo growled from behind them.

Rey rounded on Kylo and glared.  “Take three steps back and be quiet.”

They were more like mincing little shuffles, but he did back off and kept his mouth shut.

“Do you want me to call someone for you?” Rey asked, her voice softer.  “Or maybe we could just find a bench and sit for a minute…”

The poor girl was flushed pink, but shook her head resolutely.  “I’m mostly just embarrassed. I, uh… We just met. I mean, I wasn’t trying to steal your boyfriend or anything.”

“He is not my boyfriend,” Rey said, loud enough for Kylo to hear her.  Then she extended her hand and helped the other girl up to her feet. “My name’s Rey.  Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Kaydel,” the other girl replied. “And I think my pride will heal.  Um, this is weird. I’m going to go…”

Rey waved her off, and felt relieved that she didn’t seem to have any sort of limp.  Still, she took five deep breaths before turning around to look at Kylo Ren again. In the end, he spoke first.

“Rey, that wasn’t what you think. I--”

She silenced him with a gesture.  “I am trying very hard to calm down right now.” She exhaled.  “I’m sorry I accused you of pushing her. That wasn’t fair to you.  It just looked… bad.”

For his part, Kylo looked suitably miserable.  “She wasn’t anybody,” he pleaded, his tone as raw as Rey had ever heard it.  “Just some opportunist who was--”

“Who was a perfectly nice human being.” That was the only acceptable way for that sentence to finish.

“I wasn’t trying to hit on her.”

“I never said you were,” she whispered.  Rey had not let herself get too gooey-eyed over a handsome man who bought her lunch a couple of times.  Their date had been… intense. Fun, but strange. He ran hot and cold, and even though he calmed down and they had a good time toward the end, Rey was not the kind of person who let herself get carried away.  “And anyway, it was just one date.”

Kylo’s already pale skin went slightly gray.  “Well, I wanted to do it again. Exclusively. I mean, if that’s what you--”

“Are you seriously asking me out right now?”

“Kriff, Rey, I know how that looked, okay?” Kylo pulled his hands through his glossy hair, tugging it away from his face.  “But I’m me, and you’re you. I’m one colossal kark-up, and you’re like… the sweetest person ever. I just can’t let you walk away thinking of me like that.  I didn’t -- I wouldn’t -- Not ever, I swear.”

“I am not sweet,” she bit back.  “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you take care of people,” he said.

“Only because nobody was ever around to take care of me.”

For all his simmering rage and something quite like longing, Kylo did not have an immediate response to that.  People were walking around them, the scene back to normal, and Matt was still parked right in the middle of everything.  What a mess.

“Look, I--”

“Let me,” said Kylo.

“Let you?”

“Let me take care of you.  If you were mine, I’d--”

Rey let out a bitter laugh, despite herself.  That wasn’t fair to him, he didn’t deserve it.  She said the words anyway. “No offense, Kylo, but you seem like you’re barely taking care of yourself most of the time.”

He looked devastated.

“Not that I’m one to talk,” Rey blurted, unsure where this urge to soften the blow was coming from. “I mean, I ate Twizzlers for dinner last night.  I get what it’s like to be…”

“An island.

“Yeah,” sighed Rey.

Somehow, the space between them had shrunk to almost nothing, but the gulf had never been wider. Was loneliness enough? Togetherness as a cure was not sufficient to keep two people together if they were both unhappy; she’d tried that tactic early after moving to L.A.  You could feel lonely in a crowded room, which was something of a novelty. Sometimes she even felt alone with Poe or Rose. It wasn’t their fault (or hers). They just didn’t understand her the same way Finn did. And even with Finn, sometimes it felt like he was drifting away.

“You’re intense,” she told Kylo at last.  “It can be unsettling.”

“But you’re not frightened of me.” It wasn’t a question.

At that moment, the planets aligned and Rey’s stomach made a noise loud enough to penetrate the sullen silence between them, as well as the endless rush of the ocean and the din of tourists shopping.  Kylo cracked a crooked grin, and attempted not to laugh at her blushing cheeks. That damn granola bar was still in the Falcon, right where she left it.

“How about we just start with lunch, then?” he offered.

Rey sized him up.  She wasn’t a fool, but was it so terrible to believe the best in somebody?  “Only if I pay,” she decided. “Plus, Rose will lose her mind if I bring back some funnel cake.”

 

* * *

 

In the end, getting Matt out of the damn crosswalk was more bothersome than waiting in line for fish tacos and licuados.  Matt finally looked like a calm, sane person again, but Rey dragged him along for tacos anyway. A full stomach was never the wrong choice.  Well, she supposed, there was always an outside chance of vomit. But he didn’t seem stoned, he just seemed nervous; he agreed with everything she said and apologized a lot.

Kylo was subdued and quiet through most of it, but when she offered to drive him home instead of making him fold his long legs into Matt’s small sedan, he’d pulled her into a half hug that went on long enough to warm Rey through to her bones.  At some point between tacos and funnel cake, Matt left them.

“What do you think, just plain powdered sugar?” she asked, leaning into his torso. “I’m not sure the other toppings will hold up well in traff--”

Kylo’s lips were on hers, soft and dry, with a pressure so light Rey could almost believe she dreamed it.

“You can have whatever you want, Rey,” he whispered, brushing his lips over her temple.  “I hope you know that.”

Rey swallowed.  Yeah. Intense was the right word for Kylo.

“Just powdered sugar, please,” said Rey to the woman at the counter.  She hoped her voice didn’t sound as hoarse aloud as it did resonating inside her own head.

They walked back to the car in amiable silence, with a greasy parcel full of gloriously crisp fried dough.  Its smell warred Kylo’s seductive cologne, its simplicity contrasted with sophistication.

“So, um, do you want to drive?” Rey asked, fishing the keys out of her pocket.

He extended his hand, and caught the keys neatly out of the air when Rey tossed them.

“I didn’t realize you came in the Falcon,” he said as he opened her door.

“There was a swap meet earlier.  I’ve got most of the finishing touches figured out.”

Kylo put the key in the ignition and the old gal purred to life.  “She sounds fantastic. Is she running well?”

“She’s ship-shape,” Rey agreed. “I can give you your inspection sticker and you can drive her home until the rest of the parts come in.  I’ll need to see the registration materials before it’s official, though.”

He fiddled with the radio, turning the volume down on David Bowie like a heathen, before asking his real question.  “Can I still come around to see you once I take the car home?”

“I…” Manage your expectations.  Rationing was the first lesson that Rey ever learned, so she treated happiness as something to consume crumb by crumb, where no one could see you.  “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

He smiled. A real, honest-to-god smile that lit up his eyes and pulled the dappled moles along his jaw into fresh constellations.

Rey opened up the funnel cake box and risked a powdered sugar disaster to tear a piece off, holding it up to Kylo’s lips.  

“Rose won’t mind if we nibble,” she said.

He took it, along with the first digit of her thumb, and his eyes went dark when Rey pulled her hand back and licked the rest of the sugar off her hand.  Then she tore off a piece for herself.

“This stuff is basically every ambition I ever had as a kid,” she confessed.  “This tiny funfair used to come through town, and sometimes their rides would break.  One time I got the tilt-a-whirl operator to buy me three pounds of salt water taffy and two elephant ears in exchange for fixing his brake switch. I ate candy for weeks, and it was glorious.”

“Kriff, Rey, you have the palate of an eight-year-old,” Kylo laughed.  “How old were you when that happened?”

“Dunno. Maybe ten?” It had been a good summer. She was big enough and knew enough that she could basically take care of herself by then.  “And I do not have the palate of an eight year old, thank you very much. I’ll eat anything. Ask Finn.”

The look Kylo gave her was inscrutable. Rey had no idea what he wanted to say, but the words that came out of his mouth were: “So you’ve always been interested in mechanics?”

Rey shrugged.  “It was all I knew growing up, and I was lucky enough to be good at it.  What about you, what were you like when you were little?”

“I was a little sithspit, mostly,” he told her.  “My parents were busy, so I gave hell to the nannies. I wanted to be a knight.”

“Like with swords and horses?”

“Sort of,” Kylo admitted.  “Mostly I just picked a lot of fights and had to go to a lot of sports clubs and martial arts classes to tire me out. It was the way my teachers told my mother to deal with me.”

“That’s… heavy.”  At least you had parents, she wanted to say.  At least you had an education. But misery was burden enough on its own merit; it didn’t need any extra compettition.

“Turn here,” she reminded him as they finally made their way back to her neighborhood.

“I know the way.”  

He did.  Rose was, as expected, more excited about a cooling piece of fried dough than she was to hear the news that Rey and Kylo were tentatively dating.  Apparently, she thought they were already an item. Apparently, this change in status had only come as a surprise to Rey.

She tried not to hold the incident with Kaydel against him. He hadn’t told the whole story. She hadn’t given him the opportunity, too wrapped up in their little melodrama to assess the facts dispassionately.  Rey was getting in way over her head, and it was sending all of her instincts haywire.

The three of them split the funnel cake while Rey took care of the Falcon’s papers.  She was just about to place the stickers on the windshield when she looked twice at the little piece of laminated plastic tucked into her pile.

“Kylo,” said Rey, still as a stone.  “Why does this license say your name is Benjamin Solo?”


	5. Man in the Box (Alice in Chains)

“Why does this license say your name is Benjamin Solo?”

“I hate that name,” said Kylo Ren as a cold thing settled in his chest.

“But you’re him. You’re Ben,” said Rey with all the wonder of a child.

Ren ran his hands through his hair and tried not to snap.  “Benjamin Solo only exists on paper, as a legal entity who is unfortunately necessary to a number of trusts.  My name is Kylo Ren.”

“No, that’s not what I--” Tears were glistening in her eyes, and Kylo hated them almost as much as he hated what came next: “Han Solo was your father, wasn’t he?  That’s the Millenium Falcon. It did the Kessel Rally in--”

The cold thing turned hollow and shuddered.  She was looking everywhere but at his eyes.

Kylo took Rey by the shoulders and forced her to look at him, bringing her up short as she listed off a dead man’s pedigree.  

“Stop,” he snapped. “Just kriffing listen to me.”

“But I need to know.  I’m sorry, I… Was Han Solo your father? Was--”

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t getting through to her.  That was just his kriffing luck: the one nice girl he’d met, who didn’t know or care what Kylo Ren could do for her -- who might actually have liked him a little -- knew what scores upon scores of socialites, investment bankers, and board members did not.  Somehow, this nobody from nowhere, knew about Ben.

“--Chewie told me--”

“For the love of kark, Rey, just kriffing forget whatever it is you think you know!”

Rey’s voice hitched and the diatribe ceased.

“Ben Solo is dead. He’s gone,” said Ren, squeezing a little to make his point.  “Whatever you’ve heard about Han Solo and that damn car, it’s all a load of druk.  You would have been disappointed by the reality, believe me.”

“Let go of me,” she said as the first damning tear rolled down her cheek.

Kylo pried his fingers apart and forced himself to back away from her.  She was frightened, near to weeping, and Ren never wanted to cause Rey pain.  She had done nothing to deserve it, save knowing too much and understanding none of it.

She looked tense, and ready to fight. Some part of him deserved some measure of this, he knew; Rey would have probably punched him in the nose if she knew why he picked her up in the first place. As it was, the girl’s reaction confused him. His mother looked like that when his father was lying -- not quite in panic, but full of disappointment and simmering rage.

“I didn’t lie,” Ren insisted. And he hadn’t. Not about this.  “I am Kylo Ren. If they ever gave a damn about me, it’s what my family would call me.  It’s what I use professionally. It’s how all my friends know me.” Not that he had any friends in any sincere capacity. “There’s no reason for you to be acting this way.”

“And how exactly am I acting?” snapped Rey.

“Like I’m guilty of something!” he snapped back, immediately on the defensive.  “Kriff me! You want to list my every shortcoming, my every failure--”

“I only asked about your father.  Please, it’s important--”

And kriff her too, for not understanding that it was all one and the same.

“It’s none of your business,” he said at last.  “He’s dead and buried.”

"I know that," she whispered.  "I was the one who found him."

Somewhere in the background, under the sound of Rose’s impact wrench, the radio had switched to Soft Cell. Kylo couldn’t speak.  If he did, the ghost of Ben Solo would take that cold and hollow thing rattling around inside his chest and squeeze.

Rey turned her back on him and flipped open the lid of a clunky red toolbox with a resounding thunk.  The shifting trays and screws sounded somehow appropriate matched up with whirling machinery and Tainted Love.

Without saying a word, she turned around again and offered him her hand.  Ren reached out for her, but met with an old Polaroid instead of the rough skin of her palm.  Lifting up the photo, he stared uncomprehending. The old man was undeniably his father, and the skinny girl in the coveralls could only be Rey. Chewie had left his finger over half the lens, but he could just about make out half the sign for Maz’s Castle.  It was a horrible little theme diner-cum-truck stop that somehow survived the mass cult of 50s homogeny. There used to be a coin-operated jousting pony in the front reception.

It didn’t mean anything.  Lots of fans met his father, either as a war hero or a movie star or a humanitarian or -- yes -- even as a speed demon and a wanted criminal.  Han Solo was the kind of boogeyman who defied categorization, fatherhood, and obligation.

“So you met him a few times,” he sighed. “I guarantee that he never even learned you name.”

“He knew me,” Rey said. It wasn’t quite an accusation, but it wasn’t a question either.  “I hugged your mother and did up Chewie’s tie for him at the wake.”

“Stop,” said Ren.  He reached out to take her hand, but Rey effortlessly evaded him. “Han Solo didn’t care about you. He didn’t care about anyone but himself.”

“Han fed me -- gave me a job."

"Were you fucking him?"

Rey made to slap him, but then stopped herself. "How can you -- your father loved your mother, and he loved you! Han Solo pulled me out of a junkyard and gave me a life. He never--”

“ENOUGH!” he bellowed. Without meaning to, he crumpled her photo in his fist.

Rey flinched, but blessedly stayed quiet.  Kylo backed off. Somehow, she’d found a pipe wrench and brandished the spanner like a club.  It wasn’t an aggressive stance, but he knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use it if he lost his temper. Apparently he merited more than just the threat of an open-palmed slap on the cheek.

She just stood there, staring across the abyss, wondering at his pain when she’d been the one who so neatly cut him open.

“I knew him,” Rey said at last. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

Kylo reached deep for the nightmarish memory of Luke’s long lectures on self-control and coping methods, and settled on the only one that had ever been worth a damn: he ran.

 

* * *

 

In retrospect, Ben wasn’t sure how he ended up this way.  Floating in his pool at 3AM, the water equally tainted by vomit and piss, he fished a half-empty bottle of whisky out of it and drained the remaining sudge. Someone had used it to collect cigarette butts. The foam platform keeping him afloat had not been designed for his bulk; his head, arms, and feet remained tentatively above water while the rest of him tried to sink. He was still sober enough to hope it didn’t capsize.

All he wanted was to beat Hux.  All he wanted was to keep Rey.

Somehow, in the cosmic joke that was his life, he’d met a fundamentally functional and decent human being.  And she seemed to like him, even in a ratty Madonna T-shirt that Ben was pretty sure didn’t even belong to him.  And OK, yes, she kriffing knew he had money. And he’d karked up the only real date they had ever been on by being a pouty crink all night, too stupid to realize he’d been jealous over nothing. And maybe she knew she was beautiful -- gorgeous enough for the Hollywood press, even -- but she didn’t treat it like a weapon. She wasn’t precious about it.  Rey used her gifts for good. She had no position, no real power, and certainly no place in the rising Order; it hadn’t prevented her from helping people.

Ben had no doubt that the press would remain in the dark about Dameron’s homosexual proclivities for as long as Rey cared to protect him. He’d never been as fussy about that as Hux was.  Even knowing that it was a failing of genetics and upbringing, Ben could never imagine himself treating his Aunt Amilyn badly; that’s reason enough for him to tread cautiously. Rey probably didn’t even see it as a sickness.  Most of the new liberals didn’t.

It was all that kriffing dog’s fault.  None of this would have happened if he’d just gone off with whats-her-name and made the stupid tape.

So here he was: a pool in January. And even though the damn thing was heated to within an inch of boiling, it was still kriffing cold at night. All around him, the party was still going strong; he saw a pair of silicone tits as big as melons hovering in front of his face. The  nipples were cock-eyed.

No, he couldn’t quite peg the moment it all went to druk. But he was very certain that he deserved it.

Ben’s next cogent thought was that he stank simultaneously of sweat and chlorine.  Someone (it must have been Matt, because who was he kidding?) had prevented him from passing out face down in the pool all night.  The bed was soft, but his head ached.

The first thing he saw when he unglued his eyes was his own black reflection in the glass of a camcorder lens; it stared back from the foot of the bed, on a tripod.  Apparently he’d slept the wrong-way around. Ben groped at it, mauled open the casing, and was relieve to find that it had no cartridge. The battery had long since been exhausted.  Next he looked for his phone, which must have been ringing off and on through the morning, because there was absolutely no kriffing reason why else he’d be awake.

He found it on the bed-side table, up by his feet.  He’d left it dunked in one of a pair of whisky glasses, both still more than a quarter full.  It took him a few tries to pop the antenna and slide down the mouthpiece on the sleek Elite, but after turning it backwards, forwards, and upside-down, he finally got it pressed to his cotton-stuffed ear.  The voice speaking was professional and clipped. He’d already missed more than half of what the voice was trying to tell him.

“I understand that it’s a breach of protocol, Sir, but she insists. And Mr. O’Reilly did leave her name on the call list,” said the voice.  “But I called him, and he wasn’t sure what you’d want after last night.”

“Who is this?” Ben managed.  Kriff, but his stomach was churning.

“It’s Officer Thanisson, Sir. At the gate.”

“That’s not what I… Just tell me who is trying to get in,” he winced, the volume of his own voice sparing the guard stupid enough to call his personal cell phone at… Kriffing balls, it was nearly eight o’clock at night.

“Rey Doe, Sir. She says she’s delivering your Falcon.”

He swallowed a belch that soured in his throat and became a gag.  “Send her through to the house, and…”

Ben didn’t quite make it through his instructions on the first try, but once he purged and spat, matters improved for him.  “Send her through to the house, and ask her to wait. Tell someone in the kitchen to get her a drink.”

“Sir, are you certain that is--”

“Do it,” Ben groaned, too miserable to be terse.

“She says she’ll wait for 15 minutes,” said Thanisson.  

Somewhere in the background, Ben could just about make out the sound of an idling engine and the secure buzz of the gate rolling back.  The kriffing guard hung up on him.

For a man whose hair mask usually took longer than 15 minute to set, Ben thought his twenty minute turn-around on a hot shower and quick scrub was a valiant effort.  He’d more or less brushed his teeth without gagging, and he was fairly sure he threw on some deodorant before grabbing the nearest clothes without buttons or zippers in them.  He ended up in a pair of black track pants and a cashmere sweater.

By the time he got downstairs, Rey was already standing at the sink and trying to press a pair of keys into the hands of a recalcitrant Yavin woman.  It took him a moment to realize that they were speaking Spanish together.

It was the kind of talk you found in low places around town, but Ren knew enough Italian and French to catch the gist. The woman served Rey tea.  Rey wanted something about washing or wearing the plate again. The woman said it was broken, and Rey was just in the middle of offering to fix it... Except that she wanted the woman to take his keys to him first, so she could hurry up and get out of here.

By the time Ben realized he had been watching for too long, Rey had given up on anything more than fixing the... What was broken again? Was it the dishwasher, or the plate? Stupid hangover brain.

“Are you a plumber too?” he asked, because something polite or apologetic would have been entirely too wise for a kark-up like Ben Solo.

“I manage,” Rey answered, not bothering to look at him.  “Your keys and license are on the counter. Registration’s in the glove box.”

She crouched down and practically crawled inside the dishwasher, reaching her hand into the spinning mechanisms at the top and bottom. With a triumphant hum, she gave a sharp tug and stood up to present a half-folded fork bent in at least six places.

His maid, whoever she was, had none of Rey’s calmness, nor her indifference. She’d been fretting over him since the moment he arrived, apologizing for the state of the place.  They were still cleaning up after last night; she didn’t meant to break anything in the kitchen.

“It’s fine,” said Ben.

“Está bien,” translated Rey.  “Gracias, Yolanda.”

Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone so grateful to get away.  Then again, he hadn’t looked in the mirror lately.

“What happened?” asked Rey when they were finally alone.

Ben shrugged, so she closed the distance between them in a few, quick strides.

“Hell, Kylo, this looks pretty bad… Is one of these things a freezer?” she wondered, tugging open a massive stainless steel refrigerator.  “You should probably get some ice on that.”

Ben tried to sneak a surreptitious look at himself in the flawless, buff metal, but it was no good.  He found himself in the high polish of a black granite counter top instead, and tried not to overreact. His lip was swollen and split, and all of him felt so sore that he hadn’t really noticed the sting of his cut under the spray of the shower.

He looked like shit.

“Here,” said Rey as she pressed a tea towel full of ice cubes into his hands.  “You’ll want to ice it for 15 minutes and take some aspirin.”

“Why are you so nice to me?” he muttered.  But still, he took the ice and pressed it gently against his mouth.  “I didn’t really expect that you’d want to see me again after everything.”

“You seem like you’re going through some stuff,” Rey said without really meeting his eyes.  “And anyway, you left some things at my shop yesterday.”

“Was that only yesterday?  It feels like I haven’t slept in days,” he complained.

“It’s Tuesday,” she confirmed.  “The man at the gate told me to go home and come back on the 15th.  I guess you party pretty hard around here, if it takes all week. Listen, Kylo--”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted.

“-- I just wanted to say… Excuse me?” Rey blinked. “You’re sorry… what for?”

“All of it. Any of it,” he decided.  “I’m sorry I shouted and I’m sorry I implied... I'm sorry about my name.  I’m sorry I frightened you, I’m sorry about the boardwalk. I’m sorry our first date wasn’t better, and I’m sorry you had to pay for our tacos that time.”  Ben was sorry he was born, honesty. He just needed Rey to tell him what to do, and he’d do it. He didn’t want to be alone anymore, even if she only liked him because of some karked-up idea she had about his father.  It was far and away the least mercenary reason he could think of at the moment, not least because he had the hangover of the century.

Rey’s expression was inscrutable, and Ben knew then that he’d crossed the line again. It was always too much, too soon with him.  Everything he did was clumsy, or too exuberant, or reeked of desperation.

“That’s funny,” she said at last.  “Because while I was sitting in traffic, I kept trying to figure out how I was going to apologize for not listening to what you were trying to tell me.  And to be honest, I thought it would be easier if you were still too angry to speak to me, because at least then I wouldn’t have to…”

Words escaped her for a moment, but she shook her head and trudged on.  “When I was growing up, nobody ever listened to me. They just kept pushing and pushing, or worse -- they ignored me. So I’m… I’m not really sure you have anything to be sorry for.  But I… appreciate it.  About the implication, I mean.  We never... That's not how it was.  And I should have listened when you said you didn’t want to talk about it. I just… all I ever wanted was to be part of a real family, and your Dad was… Sorry. I’m doing it again.  Anyway, the Falcon is in the driveway. Don’t worry about the bill -- it really meant a lot to me to finally see the old girl up and running.”

“Just to be clear,” Ben mumbled through his fat lip, “there is no scenario in the world where you walk away without being paid.  Just because I hated… Just because we argued, it doesn’t mean you have to do me any favors. Your work meant something to me, too.  So you can invoice me, or I can mail you a wad of hundreds, but either way: guilt is a terrible reason not to take care of yourself.”

She made a noise somewhere between a sniff and a chuckle.  “Says the man who’s wearing his shirt inside out and backwards.”

Ben looked down.  “Aw, kriff…”

“You know, the same goes for you,” said Rey. She took hold of his ice pack and held it while he struggled to get his clothes on right.  When he was done, she pressed it gently against his lips. “You don’t have to do… whatever it was that you did last night just because you’re angry. Or disappointed. Or… or whatever it is that you’re feeling.

“Ugh, Rey, you’re beautiful, but please don’t tell me you’re teetotal.”

She prickled. “Obviously not, but that’s hardly the same as getting so wasted that you don’t even remember taking a punch in the face.”

“You don’t know that’s what happened,” Ben teased, the first hint of mirth returning to their repertoire.  “I could have been hit by a door. Or kicked by a horse. Or maybe I was up all night fighting crime--”

“OK, Batman,” said Rey with a roll of her eyes.  “First of all, I have punched my fair share of guys.  And second, I have taken my lumps.”

“What do you mean by that?” Ben demanded, catching Rey’s hand when she raised it to catch his chin and examine his face.

“Just that I know what a punch to the face looks like. And you, my friend, took a stiff right hook last night.  But hey, take it easy, drink some water, and you’ll be right as--”

“Rey, is someone hitting you?” Ben knew he was being too intense again, and he didn’t care.

She held his gaze for a few, long seconds that stretched into eons.  Stars were born and galaxies made. Finally, she whispered, “Not anymore.”

“That’s not good enough,” growled Ben.  “I may be one of the biggest sithspits on the planet, but I would never let anyone lay a hand on you.  Tell me who hurt you, and I will--”

“Hey. Hey, calm down. That’s a whole lot of hormones and hangover talking--”

“I am not hungover,” Ben hissed, liar that he was.

Rey gave him a sniff and grimaced.  Even after a shower, Ben wasn’t surprised to find he still smelled like stale booze.

“Listen, it’s been a long 48 hours,” Rey said.  She finally stepped away from him, leaving Ben off balance with the sudden lack of warmth in his orbit.  

“Rose and Les are both at the garage on Thursday, which means I mostly do paperwork or go picking.  Just… take a little time, and give me a call when you’re ready. We can take my speeder up the canyons, and we can have a long talk. Maybe even go on a hike.  I’ll tell you about… you know, things, and maybe you can tell me a little more about this stuff with your family.”

“Rey…”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.  “I’m sorry for pushing, but I need to know what happened.  I promise not to talk over you and shout. But I… I think I deserve to know, if we’re going to carry on with whatever this is.”

“It’s ugly,” he said at last.

Rey shrugged, and smiled sadly.  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“So show me tonight,” he tried.  Anything not to go back to the sweaty flop-house he’d made of his bedroom.

“I… can’t,” Rey told him.  “No, really, I can’t. I’m getting claustrophobic just thinking about it.  Sometimes… sometimes there are stories that you have to tell under an open sky, out in the sunshine.”

It is the most perfect excuse he has ever heard.  All those years spent being shuttled from shrink to shrink, being sent to his room by a mother at the end of her rope, being sent off to mediate in a shack with Uncle Luke… It had never occured to either young Ben Solo or jaded Kylo Ren to simply ask to try again in a place where he felt good.  Not that he had many places like that. The Chandrila Public Library, maybe. Or in the Falcon. And no matter what was happening in his life, he always felt safe at Varykino. Or under the stars at the Hoth chalet. Even watching the lava flows at Mustafar was better than sitting in Snoke’s sterile office and…

But this wasn’t about Snoke.

Kriff, Snoke. He could never find out about this.  First in his class, Master of the Knights of Ren -- the most promising group of pledges in a generation, after two decades of chaff -- all of them heirs to vast dynasties dating back well before the turn of the century.  Kylo Ren had a destiny. Ben Solo was dead.

“I… might have a board meeting on Thursday,” he said.

“Oh.” She sounded sad.  “OK, well… call me any time.  We can figure it out.”

“I could take you to dinner on Friday?” he tried.

Rey just shook her head. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Kylo.  Sorry, there have just been too many hurt feelings. We need to be on the same page if we’re going to keep doing this.”

“Do you want to keep doing this?” he asked, trying a different tactic.

“I want answers,” she admitted reluctantly. “I’m not sure about the rest. I’m willing to try.”

Well, it wasn’t a no. At least not totally.  And Rey could definitely do better than him, whereas he’d never met anyone else who even came close. Whatever it took, no matter what Snoke said, he had to see this through.  Maybe he was too loud and too angry and too intense; but when he knew, he knew. Before Rey, he only knew lukewarm affection, suspicion, and disappointment. After Rey, he could never go back.  He knew now what it felt like to connect.

“Can I use your phone?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, pointing at the new, cordless model mounted on the wall.  “Are you calling a cab?”

“Nah, I’m just going to let Finn know that he can pick me up now.  We’re spending the night at Poe’s.”

“Malibu is pretty far from Bel Air…”

Rey quirked her eyebrow at him.  Kriff. Did Poe ever mention where he lived when they went out?

“It will be fine,” Rey said. She picked up the phone (housed all in black plastic, of course) and dialed it without breaking eye contact.

In the end, her friend arrived in less than 20 minutes. Apparently Poe was doing very well for himself; he kept an address in Malibu and one in Beverly Hills.  Even if he was just in Escondido, and even if everyone knew that the 90210 didn’t count for druk if you lived in The Flats, that was still not bad for a romantic male lead who hadn’t landed any meaningful awards yet.

Poe could never give Rey even a quarter of the luxuries and opportunities that he could, though. Not even if he won an Oscar every year for a decade. And he really, really had to stop being jealous of a pair of gay men.

 

* * *

 

Ren crawled out of bed again on a Wednesday.

Matt had done his job fielding calls and keeping the rest of the world at bay, while the maid -- Yolanda, that was what Rey called her -- brought him chicken soup and Gatorade.  She even cleaned up the room around him at some point between him visiting with Rey and collapsing again, because it smelled significantly less like sweat and vomit.

But Kylo is resting, which means Matt is busy.  He wakes to find a stack of faxes and messages neatly organized in his office, with a post-it note on a thick manila folder.

I delivered everything to Mitaka, as requested. He gave me this before I left, says it’s what you asked him for & promises more to come. - M

Kylo flipped it open to the first page.  There was a picture of Rey bent over a midsize sedan.  She had a smear of grease on her face.

Rey Plutt, alias Rey Doe.  Born January 1, 1971. Parents: Unknown. Guardian: Unkar Plutt. Location of Birth: Niima, Nevada.  Birth Certificate and SSN issued in 1989, at which point she had apparently turned 18 and petitioned for replacements, only to learn that none had ever existed.

She was registered as a Master Mechanic, holding every certificate in her industry, as well as a few from adjacent specialties.  You might not find her working in the space program, but he had no doubt she could get a crop duster running. When she filled out her forms, she’d listed an apprenticeship rather than any formal schooling.  Master Mechanic Charles Bacca had under-signed.

He should not be reading this.

She’d tell him.  She promised she’d tell him, all he had to do was call her and… and share his own underwhelming traumas with a girl who had, by this account, been left in a literal junkyard sometime between the ages of 5 and 6.

Nobody at her school had ever bothered to check on her registration information; it was a small town in the 70s, and the 80s weren’t better.  She had straight As on her tests, but never turned in any homework. By the time she reached high school, she was a known truant. She flunked out in the 10th grade and didn’t go back to school again.  Nobody followed up with child services. She got her GED the summer she turned 19.

Kylo wants to punch something.

Of the utterly lacking medical files, what few there were had gone through First Order clinics.  They were not in the business of altruism, but since acquiring the Hosnian Women’s Hospitals for liquidation, they had access to their records.  At the age of 13, Rey weighed only 80 pounds. The clinic gave her a month’s supply of vitamins and told her to eat more. At the age of 14, she was treated for exhaustion diagnosed as work-related stress and malnutrition.  By 15, she still didn’t have her period, and the doctor made a call to child protective services; Rey had never gone back to the clinic after that.

At 19, she got a physical for a job.  She weighed 113 pounds by then. That was still 10 pounds less than she ought -- they’d marked her down as under-weight.  Old breaks in her collarbone and a frequently dislocated shoulder led to more X-rays. Her ribs had been broken and mended enough times to make him queasy.  She was missing a molar, which she said she lost in a fight. They put her on vitamins and a high-calorie meal supplement bar that probably tasted like chalk.  Han Solo had paid out of pocket for it.

When Kylo couldn’t bear to look anymore, he moved onto the next file.  It was a fat man, with a river of chins all covered in scruff. Unkar Plutt, personal details as yet uncertain.  He looked to be about six and a half feet tall, and probably weighed close to a quarter ton. He owned the Niima Scrap Heap, just outside of Jakku.  Well, he owned the nearest tow truck, and probably the key to a rusty gate; most of the things abandoned there came simply because it was a convenient place that everyone knew about, and nobody was bothered much by the EPA.  

As far as the government of Nevada was concerned, he claimed to be Rey's Great Uncle on her mother's side, and they accepted that without any burden of proof.  He hadn't even given the mother's name, didn't even bother to make one up.

A phone transcript didn’t amount to a confession, but reading between the lines it was easy to see what had happened.  Rey’s parents went bust in Reno, sold her off for a junker and a couple bottles of plastic vodka, and took off toward the border.  They probably weren't even alive.  Plutt kept her and fed her, as long as she earned her keep. It was a point of pride with him -- enough that he’d told it to a stranger who caught him in his cups on a call one day -- that he never spent more than $5 a week on the junkers who scrapped for him by trade.  Most were older. Most were boys.

There were small dossiers on Chewie and Han, but he couldn’t even touch those.  He burned with shame, and if he invited guilt, regret, or memory to the party Ren felt as though he might really ignite.

Rose Tico came next -- Vietnamese American, dropped out of Caltech. Relationship: Employee, Friend.  Her parents didn’t speak to her, but they worked in a First Order refinery, so there might be some leverage there if need be.  She had started going to classes again quite recently.

Her sister, Paige, was dead.  She’d been a two-bit TV actress denied service by a First Order hospital after testing positive for HIV; she received palliative care in a Hosnian clinic, with her sister as the POA.  Mitaka had about 20 pages on that, all of them from Legal -- she’d been in an accident, and she alleged that the First Order medical system gave her contaminated blood. Blood given in ‘87, when test screenings were required by law. It was karked, and they knew it, but the Ticos didn’t have the kind of money you needed to fight it; the parents disowned one daughter when they could no longer afford to insure her against a growing moral crisis, and shunned the other for refusing to abandon Paige to her illness.

Leslie Strong -- African American, single mother of 3.  Relationship: Employee. Served 2 years in the 80s for Food Stamp fraud, kids were in the system for the duration.  She’d been brought in twice in association with irregular VIN numbers coming out of the Irving Boys’ garage, back when it was still owned by the Irvings.  Since working for Rey, she’d moved twice -- into progressively safer neighborhoods. Her oldest boy was starting City College in the spring.

Finnegan N. Freeman, alias Finn. Relationship: Close Friend.  African American, former-military, served in the Gulf War before being given a Blue Discharge.  Mitaka took special care to highlight that this was a common alternative to the full court martial for unnatural activity.  There were lots of Blue Discharges lately. Grew up around Compton, bouncing between group homes and foster families. When he got out, the only job he could find was cleaning toilets.  Currently employed as a live-in caretaker at a Malibu property.

It wasn’t in the report yet, but Ren knew it would be.  Someone was going to take a look at Dameron just as soon as his name came up, and they were going to see what Kylo saw.  He couldn’t… No matter how much Kylo didn’t like it, no matter how contrary it was the the rising Order and the ideal world state, Ren didn’t think he could let it happen.  He didn’t even know if he wanted to, despite how much he loathed that stupid, charismatic action hero. The only thing he could think of was the sight of Aunt Amilyn trembling in his mother’s arms the night they found out Aunt Chyron had been attacked in an alley.  By morning, both the grief and his Auntie were gone; you could always take another loss, his mother said, as long as you never stopped fighting for hope.  Or was it hoping for a good fight? Where Leia Organa was concerned, there wasn't always a difference.

He needed to stop reading.  He could not. It didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter. It wasn’t true. Rey would tell him on Thursday.

Kylo slid open his phone and pulled up Rey’s number -- it was the garage number, actually, but he knew they had an answering machine.  She could pick him up at 10:30.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We had a big emotional roller-coaster for Kylo Ben this chapter. Let's hope that he will be sufficiently shocked out of his protective bubble of poisonous rhetoric and hateful attitudes to make some real progress as a human being. I think Rey has finally caught on that this is not a person she should trust so lightly. She has still agreed to take him on a drive out into the countryside, though, and I can only attribute that to the canonical blind spot that Rey has for Ben. She WANTS him to be good; she's feeling the same connection -- maybe the first real connection of a romantic nature in her life -- and she's taking stupid risks to keep it. I suppose we will have to see how their hike goes, and hopefully get those two idiots into bed next chapter. #PromisesPromises


End file.
